Secrets in the Dark
by CoatNTails
Summary: Christine is plagued by uncertainties. Fearing that they will taint her imminent marriage, she makes a last desperate effort to put them to rest. But, well-intentioned though she is, the eve of her wedding takes a very unexpected turn.
1. To the Cemetery

__Author's Note: This fic is a shameless indulgence. I wanted to "fix" certain aspects of LND that drove me nuts, and also play with what might have happened after the events of POTO. Pre-read warnings: this fic liberally hints at all kinds of adulty stuff, including but not limited to sexy-times, murder, heartbreak, suicidal thoughts, and infidelity. I lean heavily on both ALW and Leroux, and offer up my heartiest thanks to both for the wonderful stories and characters they've created. I hope you enjoy this ridiculously florid romp through emo-town. Thank you so much for reading.__

* * *

When Christine told Raoul that she wished to visit her father's grave, he didn't question it.

"Of course you're thinking of your father today," he said. "I wish, just as you do, that he was here with us. I wish I could tell him how ardently I desire to make you happy. I wish I could embrace him as my own father, and thank him for bringing my own eternal happiness into this world. What I wouldn't give to hear him play for us as we march down the aisle, the same tunes that he played for us when we were children."

Raoul was kind. Unfailingly kind.

He held her, kissed her brow, and told her that he would order the horses for her. She declined gently, expressing the desire to ride out in a cab instead. That brought the first small pinch of concern to his brow.

"But, why?" he asked.

"I want a little time just to my self, Darling."

His face betrayed his surprise. "I thought I would come with you, to pay my own respects..."

"Please, Darling," she said gently, "not this one time. I wish to speak to my father alone... It is the last day that I shall be his. Tomorrow I become yours instead. Happy day! But let me say my farewells to the days of singing to that fiddle, and dancing barn to barn out in the countryside with my papa."

"...Of course."

Another man might have pushed. Maybe even rightfully so. But not Raoul. Her Raoul had never pushed since that night of horror in the opera house. He blamed himself for what had happened, she thought, when his insistence on a plan had almost led to their annihilation. Her desires had never been questioned since, and this request was no different. But still his brow pinched tighter, and his dismay was plain on his face.

"If neither I nor anyone from my house can protect you, then I want you to take this."

"Oh, Raoul. The danger's passed, now," she said, putting her hands up to ward away the small pistol he proffered.

"We can't know that for sure."

"Surely __he__ is dead," she said quietly. "And there is nothing else to threaten us."

"If you'll not have me or my man, it must be the pistol, Dear one."

"Do you insist, Monsieur?"

"I do."

She detested the weight of the pistol secreted in her cloak, but would not refuse Raoul's one request. Nor would she chide him for making a fuss over her safety. No, she would never ridicule him for that. She knew that she was not the only one to suffer fearful dreams of lassos, and water, and flickering candles in the dark. She would not begrudge him the pistol.

She bid him farewell. They shared a kiss, smiled tremulously, and promised to dream of each other until they met before the alter on the following day.

With such a late start, Christine didn't arrive at the cemetery until evening. When the driver mentioned that it might be difficult to hail another cab there at that hour, and asked her if he should stay, she almost laughed at the idea of him leaving. But the laugh never quite made it to her lips. And to her own surprise, she told him she wouldn't be needing him to stay.

Numbly, she walked, hardly seeing the gravestones and monuments she passed. What was the knot in the pit of her stomach that twisted like the snake? Why did she feel like a naughty child who had escaped punishment for her dishonesty? It was true, what she'd said. Every word. But was it the entirety of the truth? There was a heavy weight on her chest, and it was more than the now familiar pain of her father's loss.

All at once, she found herself before the tomb, and looked up to see the name, Daaé, carved in stately letters on the stone. She fell to her knees in the gloaming, crossing herself before bowing her head beneath that heavy weight of confusion. Who was she really mourning? She shook her head as if the thought had been spoken aloud and she had to deny it. Her father, her poor father. The violinist, bright and warm and gentle. ...and also the creature so unlike him that he might have been his shadow, the dark, brooding father of her voice.

Christine's eyes flew open. The somber letters - Daaé – peered at her still through the gloom, keeping watch over her. How could she think of those two men together in the same span of a breath. What a betrayal to the one to think of the other, after all her naiveté... And yet, there had been moments... achingly beautiful moments when he had been so tender, when he truly had seemed like an angel... And his music had enveloped her, transported her, pulled at her very soul, touched her more intimately than any mortal hand ever could. Her cheeks burned at that traitorous thought. It was the touch of heaven, purer than anything experienced by human flesh.

How could such a cruel, life-taking monster bring such beauty into the world?

Tears of confusion stung her eyes. They dotted her gown as they fell.

Her hands clasped together, white-knuckle tight, and she rested her forehead against them. She prayed fervently to her father for guidance, for peace, for the strength that she didn't feel. She prayed for her poor husband-to-be who could never know this secret guilt that coiled in his bride's soul like a viper. She prayed for her own frail self, that heaven would fortify her against whatever it was she was feeling. She prayed for love to fill her heart, pure and steadfast, leaving no room for haunting melodies, or regret, or the velvety touch of darkness. But the pain in her heart did not relent, nor the twist of the knot in her stomach. She looked up to face the silent judgement of her own name, barely legible in the fading light.

It was dishonest to deny what she felt, even if it was a wrong feeling. One could not slay a beast that one refused to see. She had to let it out, or it would fester there, locked in the cage of her breast. She had to give it a voice, face it, set it free so it could die. And she would leave it there, in that cold, dark graveyard. She could not stand before the alter and pledge herself to her earthly lord and master while still harboring this thing in her heart.

A shaking inhale of breath... and then her voice, soft and tremulous, poured out into the night.

The cemetery seemed to hold its breath and listen.

Stillness was broken by the first lofty notes of a requiem. She had practiced it for him, during those months of tutelage in the opera. He had lavished such praise on her the day she'd struck that perfect note, and it had filled her cramped little dressing room like a ray of heavenly light. Her voice hung suspended in the cold air, floating, untethered. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks, but still her voice soared high and clear into the dark. Sorrow, and pity, and all the love she should not feel for evil things that stalked in the shadows – they all took wing in the night.

But still, it wasn't enough. The thing that coiled round and round in her breast called for a different melody. One of the Phantom's own making. One that she had been meant to sing on stage, but never did.

The Phantom's opera as a whole had been, kindly put, very strange. The majority of the music was discordant, harsh to the ear and unnatural to the tongue. The libretto was vulgar and base. Because of the Phantom's impatience, none but the company had heard anything beyond the duet in act two – the horrible duet that made Christine feel as if she were being undressed right there upon the stage, as if the notes of music themselves became groping hands on her body – but after that, if only he hadn't snatched her from the stage like some monster in a fairy tale – there would have been her aria.

The soprano's aria in the third act was like a redemption. It was beautiful, undeniably beautiful, with words that were sad and sweet. It was a glimpse of grace in a tangle of madness, and it was the one piece of that feverish work that she had truly enjoyed practicing. But how could she admit admiration for the work of a murdering ghost, even to herself?

When it was all over, and she was safe in the daylight, safe in the shelter of Raoul's arms with the opera house in ashes – only then had she realized that she had truly __wanted__ to sing it. Had she been allowed, she might have absolved him on that stage. The whole world would have glimpsed that beauty beneath the ugliness. They might have begun to understand then... But that was not to be. And no one now would think her sane if she told them that she wished to perform the Phantom's music. It would never be heard by anyone ever again.

Fresh tears sprang to her eyes at that thought. The music, the beautiful music. She let her eyes fall closed, and at last surrendered to what she felt, refusing to deny it any longer. The aria sprang from that heavy place in her breast and took wing. Only the dead were there to listen. Silently, the graves acknowledged her regret. Silently, her father's tomb accepted her longing. From Christine's mouth poured the angel's music, and she let herself love the beauty of it without remorse. There was no one, and nothing, there in the gloom that would judge her for what she felt. No accusing eyes, no jealous heart. Nothing but her, and the dark, and the music.

And when it was done, she finally felt clean.

Christine opened her eyes to find that dusk had turned to night. A night without even a shred of silvery moonlight, or any friendly stars. She was alone, in a cemetery, in the dark. For a moment she felt like a child again, frightened by the thought of unseen spirits. But that childish fantasy was too brief, for the moment that followed made her clutch for the pistol hidden in her cloak with the fear of a grown woman. She was not alone in the dark. Someone was there with her. Someone was there. She had grown too accustomed to the comings and goings of an unseen presence in her dressing room not to know it – some subtle change in the air, some animal sense of the eyes on the back of her neck. Someone was there in the dark with her, drawing closer.

Christine turned to run, but froze at the sound of an indrawn breath, so close to her that if she reached out, she was sure she would meet the source. That breath, when it was released, was a shuddering whisper of her name.

" _Christine..."_

Her hands flew to her mouth to stifle her own sharp gasp.

"...Oh, Christine... why did you come?"


	2. The Promise

__Author's note: Emotional outbursts galore in chapter two as spark meets tinder and two people who were never meant to meet again come together.__

 _ _I can't see Erik being in a particularly healthy state of mind after losing everything. We see him here trying very hard to hold to the choices he made - to desire Christine's happiness more than his own. His success is questionable.__

 _ _We've seen Christine display incredible bravery. I believe she would need to be brave again when unexpectedly thrust back into the company of an emotionally unstable Erik.__

 _ _ALW never mentions Erik's name, and since his work is the primary inspiration for this, neither do I.__

 _ _PLEASE NOTE: this chapter may disturb victims of verbal, psychological, or physical abuse. It may also trigger anyone who is bothered by the expression of suicidal thoughts__

 _ _I hope you enjoy.__

* * *

Christine stood, dumb with shock, wide-eyed and blind in the darkness. It was _him._ The Phantom lived.

" _Why?_ " he snarled, the sudden rage in his voice startling her out of her shock and making her shrink back against the stone of her father's tomb. "Why could you not leave me to my emptiness? Why would you come here, to torture me with your voice -"

"I'm going to be married tomorrow," she said in a rush.

She heard the shuffle of feet as he recoiled from her words.

"...my angel, bound to earth," he whispered.

A moment's silence, and then Christine moved towards him, drawn to the pitiable despair in his voice. He responded like a cornered animal afraid to show its pain, snapping at her before she got too close.

"And why did you not bring your Vicomte with you? Where is your staunch protector now? Let him come with his fine horses and his bright sword before I do you wrong..." The vicious snarl in his voice bled away, leaving a terrible weariness in its wake. "...Let him come. I won't fight him this time. I am where I belong, at last. Let him lay my bones to rest here, and send my soul back to hell."

"Don't," breathed Christine.

"It would be a kindness," he hissed.

Another moment of stillness, and then Christine crept closer still.

"Angel," she whispered.

He echoed her, "Don't."

Christine went still. The Phantom's next breath was ragged, betraying the tears she could not see in the dark. Though she was blind in the night, his face appeared for her there in her mind, twisted by deformity and sadness. It made her chest go tight and brought tears of sympathy to her own eyes.

"...Why did you come, Christine."

She pulled in a breath though the tightness that gripped her chest, and forced the words out.

"To say goodbye."

Silence answered her. She strained her eyes in the darkness, but couldn't see his face.

"...And how did you know where to find me?" he asked at last.

"I didn't... I didn't know you'd be here. I thought... The fire..."

"You thought I was already dead," he finished for her. "Trapped by the hoard in the belly of a burning building. But the Opera house was mine, Christine. Every timber of her. Every passage. She gave me up to freedom and the cool night air before she herself died in that inferno. ...But you didn't know that?"

Christine trembled to hear his voice come closer, hear some of his old surety creep back into it.

"...Were you singing to my ghost, then?"

"...I thought..."

"You thought you'd unburden yourself," he sneered. "Empty yourself of my music, the music of the night, the music _I_ gave you, spill it out into this empty place of death and leave it behind." Christine cowered at the sound of his rising anger, louder and louder with every word. "So you can go and live your life in the sun with Monsieur le Vicomte, waste your voice on the uninspired piffle that other men will pay to hear you sing! And he'll parade you and your stolen voice to the world, the maiden he snatched from the claws of a monster, the beautiful trophy on his arm, while you preen like the greedy little songbird y–"

He faltered. She felt him hesitate, felt the looming presence of him shrink and draw away again, and all the thunder in his voice disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

"...the life... that you deserve. Life in the sun. The life that beauty should have."

Further still he shrank from her, and drew a steeling breath to murmur the last.

"...Goodbye, Christine. I wish you all the joy in your marriage that the dark cannot give."

Christine lurched forward. Her hand flew out towards the source of the voice, and met the sleeve of his coat. Her fingers clutched at the cuff to halt him. He froze in the act of turning away from her and stood, for a moment, her prisoner.

"There was joy," she breathed.

His head turned towards her with the softest whisper of skin brushing cloth.

"There was joy, in the dark. There was rapture. In your music. It was beautiful."

Words tumbled from her lips that she didn't mean to say, and flowed into a torrent beyond her control. "That's why. That's why I came here. I can't. I can't live, in the sun, with your music in my head, in my heart, where I can't let it out, where no one will understand. I can't bear another sympathetic embrace for the horrors I endured, can't feign revulsion for it all, when in my heart it feels like I betrayed –"

Her voice cut off before she could utter the word 'angel' again. They both knew he was no angel. Her fingers quivered on his sleeve. With glacial slowness, the Phantom turned to face her again. Her grip weakened, allowing his arm the freedom to move, and it slid beneath her touch until she felt his long fingers brushing hers.

"...My teacher," she whispered. The word felt inadequate. But they both let it lie.

"Your lover spoke the truth," said the Phantom softly. He let out the next breath in a stilted laugh. "He has many flaws, your Vicomte, but dishonesty is one of mine and not his. Your choice was a lie. You chose to stay with me to save him." He laughed again, a terrible, broken sound. "I may as well have thrown the noose around my own neck when I offered you such a choice. You would have withered there, in the dark, if I had kept you by force."

"To leave you alone in the dark was too cruel," Christine sobbed softly.

"Don't you listen to what the papers say?" he said, his voice half mocking. "It was a monster you left there. Your pity is wasted on the suffering of a heartless monster – "

"You are a monster!" she spat through her tears, making him jolt like she had struck him a physical blow. Her hands moved again to clutch at both his sleeves as though she would grapple with him, fling him to the ground, dash him against the stone herself for all the terrible things he'd done. "You are a monster. Don't ever pretend to yourself that you are not. And don't you dare try to pretend to me. Once, you suffered unjustly, shunned by a cruel world for a fault that you could not help. When I learned that, I wept. I could have wept forever for what was done to you then. To think of what you might have been if you had known even a little mercy then! But now – you've earned the world's ire, and mine, too. Buquet, and poor Piangi – Raoul, too, if you had had your way. And how many more, Monsieur, that I don't know about? How many succumbed to your pitiless traps, how many have you strangled with these hands?"

She tightened her grip and thrust his arms up between them, accusing him with his own hands as if the blood on them was still fresh. As if it weren't too dark to see it. He stumbled back a step, but offered her no other resistance, and she cried out in anger at him for his betrayal.

"How can these be the same hands that brought such __beauty__ into the world? how can they be both the instruments of death and of such rapturous music? How can heaven and hell work together through one man? Who are you, if you are not my angel?"

Christine crumpled, bowing her head under the weight of her confusion, and sobbed in earnest. With slow gentleness, the Phantom unfettered himself from her grasp. He wrapped his arms around her, expecting every moment to be pushed away. And when she did not resist, he pulled her close into the uncertain embrace of someone who hardly knew how to offer human comfort.

"Christine," he whispered wretchedly. "Oh, Christine. My Christine. I am... I am all of that, but I am your Angel, too. I am remade by you, Christine. Your power over me is complete. At your command, I would become whatever you desire."

"I have no power over you," she cried ruefully.

"You command my very soul, Christine. You rule my heart. The music within me lives for your voice alone. Without you, I have nothing. I am nothing. A ghost in truth. I haunt this place like a shadow. I wait for death here, like the cadaver I appear to be. Christine..." His arms tightened around her with a hint of their old covetousness. "Christine, give me my death. Please. Before you are married, take the pistol that is hidden in your cloak, and free me. For if you do not..." The Phantom trembled for a moment, battling with himself, before he pushed her away to hold her at arm's length. "If you do not, I'm not sure I can keep myself from you. Christine, save us both, and pull the trigger. End your nightmare for good, and go to your knight, le Vicomte, so he can give you the life that will let you blossom."

"Stop," she breathed, resisting his push.

"I am only so strong, Christine," he warned her with a hiss.

"Then let me be the strength you need," she said.

His hands spasmed. But then he pushed her away again with a groan.

"Why do you torture me still?"

"Because this living hell is one of your own making," she said sternly. "I will be your tormentor. I will bring you pain, if I must, for as long as I must, if it means that I can save you from the eternal fires that wait for you. If what you say is true, and I have that power, then I will command you. Be the angel, and not the demon. Nurture the power of creation that you have. Never use these hands –" she pried them from her arms and held them, upturned, in her own, "– to bring death to anyone ever again. Use them instead to create – do your penance that way, for the rest of your natural days."

The dreaded Phantom of the Opera quailed at the words of the girl before him, no longer a girl at all but an agent of heaven cloaked in human flesh.

"I am beyond your salvation," he gasped.

"You are mine to command," she reminded him.

"Would you condemn me to life without you? That is only a different kind of hell."

"Promise me," she demanded. "If you love me, as you've said you do, then promise me."

"Merciless siren!" he cried, wrenching his hands out of her grasp to grab and shake her. "What is it you would have me live for in this empty world? You took everything that I had to give. You would pin me to the rock, your Prometheus, and eat the heart out of me every day! And deny me what little shreds of vengeance I can take. Release me, damn you! Release me from the chains you've bound me in. You gave me life, and then stole it away, but left me still breathing to feel the loss of it. Damn you!"

Christine lacked the power over her body to keep it from shaking. But she held her chin high in the face of his fury, and her voice remained strong and clear.

"It is your turn to choose," she said. "Speak your promise to me, or reveal your lie before heaven. Your promise, if you truly love me. If you do not, then damn __you__ , and damn myself, too, for ever believing you capable of anything but horror. I would deserve whatever fate I met at your hands, then. So promise me. Or else punish the sin of a bride who flees her fiancé on the eve of her wedding for the sake of regretting you!"

He held her still, pinioned in the strength of his grip, but his head was bowed in shame. She could hear each low, ragged breath as the war between heaven and hell played itself out within him. Hesitantly, unsure if he'd let her, she lifted her hands to his face. He didn't pull away. But the touch drew a soft whine of anguish from his throat. She almost gasped at the feel of the pitted flesh beneath the fingers of her left hand. Of course, he had left his mask in the opera house. He wore none but the dark this time. Her fingers smoothed over both the whole and the marred flesh, unflinching, until her palms rested against his cheeks. Her finger tips brushed over the trails of shed tears, traced up over the pain-pinched brow, and caressed the clenched line of his jaw with pleading tenderness.

"...Promise me," she begged him softly.

Fresh tears fell to wet her hands, and he shuddered like a tower struck by cannonade.

"I promise," he answered finally.

"Say it to me. All of it."

"I promise you, Christine, that I will never use these hands to take another life, or to create anything that will take life. I promise to live out my natural days. And to spend them in the creation of beauty, so long as I can. I promise you, my angel, on all that is sacred."

Christine bent her head to rest her brow against his. Tears of joy and relief streamed freely down her face.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He called out softly in return, desperate for her to believe it, "Christine, I love you."

Her breath hiccuped in a quiet sob and the hands on his face trembled.

He lifted his own hand to cover the one that touched his left cheek, holding it cherishingly against the unmarred side of his face. The human side. Then his other hand plucked hers from the ruin of his deformity, and he turned to press a tremulous kiss against her palm.

The next sob that escaped her throat wasn't quiet. Nor the one after that. In moments, she was reduced to weeping like a terrified child. It seemed to wash over her all at once – how close she had just felt to her own destruction, how frightening it was to be in the power of this man – how deeply she longed for his approval and love.

The Phantom released one of her hands to wrap his arm around her and pull her against him. He didn't murmur soft comforts into her hair the way Raoul would have. And he didn't stroke soothingly over her back as she remembered her father doing when she was a child. By comparison, the Phantom's embrace was almost austere. But he was steady, and warm, and he held her until the storm had passed and she rested quietly against his breast. Christine was suddenly reminded of a beast standing sentry. Like a wolfhound guarding its squalling pups. As the flood of tears receded, so did her fear, and she almost laughed at the thought that nothing in the world would dare harm her while this terror was standing guard.

Receding tears calmed into stillness. And in the stillness, the moment came for either one of them to pull away. It came, and it lingered, and then uncertainly it passed. Such a strange, unexpected embrace in the dark. She felt the beat of his heart beneath her cheek flutter with the awareness of her closeness. He felt the quick thrum of her pulse beneath the fingers that still held her wrist.

Time seemed to freeze as they each listened to the music of the other's beating heart. And when he spoke, pressed against him as she was, she could feel his voice as much as hear it.

"...What would you command of me next, angel?"

Christine closed her eyes, dispelling even the illusion of sight, and concentrated on the sound and feel of his breath, his heart, his voice.

"...Sing," she said. "Sing for me."


	3. House of Cards

_Author's note: If you've gotten this far, bless your heart._

 _Erik continues to be worshipful and manipulative by turns. Christine struggles to understand what it is she really wants._

 _Links to music below for insight about what Erik decides to sing._

* * *

The heart beneath her cheek quickened. One uncertain breath, two – and then everything slowed.

" _ _Personne ne l'ecouterait... Nul autre que vous entendu comme le paria entend__ _._ "

Soft as mink, the Phantom's voice wove around her. She knew immediately that the song was his own; the sorrowful beauty of it was unmistakable. While she still had room to think, she wondered if it was something he had written about her when he was alone in the dark, or if it flowed freely from him in that moment. Silkily it poured around her, gentle as a lullaby, setting her apart from all the world. Setting both of them apart. It shouldn't be that way, she thought. It was so awful that it should be that way. All the world should know this beauty... and no one should be alone. It was loneliness that made monsters out of men.

" _…_ _ _Personne, sauf vous … Christine.__ "

The last notes flickered like a candle flame and then curled away like smoke. The sadness left Christine aching. With an impulsively whispered prayer against the cloth of his shirt, her hands moved to slide around his body beneath his cloak, holding him, shielding him from that horrible loneliness. His breath shuddered out of him in a long sigh of ecstasy, and his hands shook when he moved to embrace her in turn. But before they could tighten around her, he snatched them back again, like her body might burn him. All of his conflict played out for her in the percussion of his heart, but then once more it lengthened and slowed. Daring to reach for her again, his hands touched her hair, and that he seemed to deem permissible. Cherishingly, he stroked her hair, cupped her face, tipped it up towards him. She blinked her eyes open, as blind with them open as she was with them closed, and wondered if he had gained some power to see in the dark after all those long years in his underground lair. Was he looking at her at that moment? Did he see her? Her lips parted in shock at the realization that she wished she, too, could see, could look past the ugliness into his eyes the way his voice looked into her soul.

" _Der Augen leuchtendes Paar, das oft ich lächelnd gekos't..._ "

Song enveloped her again, his voice pouring out rich and deep, dipping low into notes she didn't know he could reach. The words tripped over her mind, the guttural, unfamiliar sounds of the German passing over her almost entirely without comprehension, only the occasional common word breaking through the language barrier. But she didn't have to understand the words to understand the music. And the love in it swallowed her up so completely that she wasn't sure how she could breathe. On and on he sang, his voice unbearably beautiful, making her feel like they were both untethered from the earth and were floating high above it. And all the while the adoration in the music washed over her. Her eyes fell closed again, and her head fell back, giving its weight to his cradling hands. On he sang, until she felt his breath against her face, heard this voice almost in her ear, and for one breathless moment she thought he would kiss her.

His lips came to rest high above her own, with a tender press against first one eye and then the other. They were chaste, cherishing kisses that left the taste of salt on his mouth. When at last he pulled away, Christine discovered that her fingers were curling to clutch at his back.

"Christine," he said in a voice heavy with want, "let us say farewell."

"I won't leave you," she answered softly.

"You must."

"How can I?"

"You came to say goodbye," he reminded her.

"Yes... but that was when I thought you were dead."

Cradling her head in one hand, he stroked the fingertips of the other in a caress over her brow, cheek, jaw and down her throat.

"I can't follow you into the daylight, Christine," he murmured. The hint of a smile crept into his voice. "It wouldn't do to have me seen at your wedding. The bride's side would scatter in fright while the groom's side simply denied my existence. And _you_ would be denied the attention that a bride is due."

Christine let the joke passed unacknowledged. "I'll speak for you."

"Impossible."

"I will help them understand," she insisted.

"That would be ruinous for us all," he said sharply, the smile in his voice vanishing. "The world has already passed its judgement on me, and recent events will not have made it kinder. You've seen enough to know what would happen. The sheep would become wolves and set on us both before they accepted me into their fold. You live in a different world. Stay up in that world, with your fiancé, and leave me to mine."

"You mustn't stay this way, alone, locked away from everything good in the world. It'll drive you mad."

He laughed, bright and clear and fiercely bitter. "Have you forgotten who you're speaking to?"

"It isn't a joke," she replied angrily.

"But it is. The whole idea of it. Only you seem to be missing the humor."

"So you prefer to hide forever?"

"I have no choice," he snapped.

"Then let me stay."

That stunned him into a moment of silence. Then he shifted to put an inch of space between them.

"You tread the line, Christine," he growled.

"Don't make me go."

"You will find the borders of my strength, and we'll both regret it."

"I know how strong you are."

"You know nothing!" the Phantom roared, the caressing hand at her throat tightening. "You are a child, who believed the creature gazing through the glass into your dressing room was an angel. But your angel is only a man, Christine. A starving man, and you'd sit him before a banquet and tell him to be strong. You don't know what this night might bring if you do not have mercy on me and leave."

"...You're right," Christine murmured, voice shaking under his fingers. "You're right, I don't know what this night will bring. But if it is only the night I can share with you, and this is the last night of all... then I wish to stay. To show you that you are not alone. To show you that I hear you, even if no one else ever has. To show you that I understand. And... to show you... that if you are not an angel... then I am not a child."

His back went rigid beneath her hands, his whole body held tight as an e-string. He rolled her words over in silence, peering at them from every angle to try and glean their true meaning.

"... And what," he said slowly, "of your Vicomte...?"

Christine's throat flexed beneath his hand as she swallowed. A chill trickled through her bones. Fright made her heart flutter like a trapped bird, but it wasn't at all the same kind of fright she'd felt before. It wasn't fear for her body or her life. It was the fear of discovering that stone castles could become sand. Everything she thought she was sure of – suddenly it was all a house of cards, quivering as the next was carefully placed. She loved Raoul. That was true, without a doubt. She loved Raoul. And she wanted to share each and every day with him. Him alone...

In a rush, the cards tumbled.

"I don't know," she whispered.

* * *

 _ _Author's note: This whole fic is an indulgence for me, and the musical selections I've picked for our Phantom are no less so. I have tried to make sure that they are at least... plausible. Though to suggest that Erik might have heard Wagner's Die Walküre does seem a bit of a stretch. Wagner's Ring Cycle would have been very new, and would not have been performed in Paris by this time, though it did tour Europe. Erik may have slipped away and seen it at some point, or managed to get a hold of some sheet music and performed it in his own head. Considering the avant-garde stuff Erik himself was writing, he could conceivably have been very interested in contemporary music, maybe even more so than the classics.__

 _ _Considering Erik's famed intelligence and love of opera, I think its safe to assume that he knows several languages. Italian would be a given – Christine herself as an aspiring Soprano would have to know Italian, too. Even if no one else had seen the need to teach a Swedish chorus girl Italian, I'm sure Erik himself would have done so. It isn't beyond belief that Erik would also know German, though Christine probably wouldn't.__

 _ _Perhaps the biggest liberty I am taking is with Erik's range... he's obviously a tenor. Wotan's role dangles on the lower end of baritone into baritone-bass. I don't know enough about singing to know if he could conceivably have this kind of range, though I have read about baritones being able to perform both bass and tenor parts... Erik is exceptional in so many ways... think he could pull off a baritone-bass aria? ;) Ben Lewis is technically a baritone, isn't he? Let me know what you think.__

 _ _(To anyone who knows history or opera much better than I do – and I'm sure there are many of you – please accept my humblest apologies for my ignorant mucking about with these details! Feel free to correct my nonsense and educate me.)__

 _ _(Also, French class was long ago, and I sadly rely on google translate. Would Erik use the formal 'vous' with Christine? Under normal circumstances, probably not, but with the dynamic of the moment, maybe...?)__

 _ _More music and intimacy to come...__

 _ _FFN doesn't let me post links properly, so please replace DOT with a .__

 _ _No One Would Listen – deleted number from the 2004 POTO movie ( youtuDOTbe/dfZnIGETQPQ )__

 _ _Die Walkurie – Wotan's Farewell, with english subtitles of the german libretto ( youtuDOTbe/7pTaH8USQH4 )__


	4. Forgiveness

Silent as the grave. It was a familiar phrase. but Christine had never quite experienced a silence so complete. The beat of her own traitorous heart was all that there was. She could no longer even hear his breath.

When the Phantom finally moved, it was with infinite care. Fingers slid slowly from her neck to her shoulders, traced down her arms as though to reassure himself of her shape, and then hovered at the edges of her sleeves. Her hands tingled at the closeness, anticipating his touch, but he maintained that sliver of space between them. Christine stared hard into the dark where she thought his face must be. She could not endure another moment of that silence.

"Will you say nothing?" she asked at last, a note of pleading in her voice.

"I am choosing my words," he said, his tone as careful as his touch.

"Have I struck you speechless?" she said with a fragile laugh. "I think Messieurs Andre and Firmin would be pleased to know it's possible..."

"I am not certain how to reply, as I am not certain I have taken your meaning correctly."

"How can there be more than one meaning in what I have said?" she answered shortly.

"There must be, when what leaps to mind is so entirely unexpected."

"Your failure to leap at any inch given you is unexpected. You have been, till now, such an opportunist."

"Are you so impatient?" he asked in a way that made her cheeks burn.

"Do not mock me."

"Mademoiselle, tonight, I would not dare."

Still he did not take hold of Christine's hands, and she clenched them into fists so she wouldn't have to feel the emptiness of them.

"I would hear your answer, Monsieur. If indeed you wish to answer."

"The answer I wish to give would not be composed in words."

She swallowed to ease the sudden dryness of her throat.

"Then why do you hesitate?" she asked, sounding faint even to her own ears.

"...I hesitate," he said in the same careful tone, "because once I begin to answer, I do not trust myself enough to wait on your own reply."

Her next breath was expelled in a huff of disbelief.

"You showed no hesitation in the Opera house. You did not hesitate to snatch me and carry me off when it was against my will."

"Is it now your will that I snatch you and carry you off?"

"Why are we spinning in this _pas de deux!_ " she exclaimed, bowing her head, though the dark already hid her flaming cheeks.

"Christine." His voice was suddenly raw and demanded her full attention. "Answer me now. Is this part of my torment? Is this another penance for my soul? Some test I must pass?"

"No," Christine whispered, half in horror.

She heard him pull a deep breath in, and release it in a slow, measured exhale.

"In the opera house... When I... let you go," he said, seeming to have difficulty with the words, "when I let you, both, go... and you left, with _him_..." He paused to swallow.

"Yes," she prompted him, not sure he would continue.

"...Do you regret your choice?"

Christine squeezed her eyes closed. Her clenched hands flew to her breast to try and contain its heaving. That beast that she had gone there to slay, the one that she did not wish to see, reared its fearsome head and looked her squarely in the eye.

"Christine... Do you love me?"

She thought her chest would burst. She could not understand how it did not tear itself open on the spot. Her heart thrashed, locked in bloody battle with her conscience, and the pain of it was unbearable. But it was the heart that was striking the death blow, for she heard it howl out the answer to his question. An impossible answer. She could not comprehend how it could be. Because when she asked herself if she still loved Raoul, the answer did not change. She could not understand. But her heart did not require her understanding. It only required that she open her mouth and allow it to answer.

"...You are my Angel of Music," it said. "I have loved you from the moment I first heard you sing."

The words broke over him slowly. Then the Phantom's breath hitched as one waking from a dream. He surged forward, catching her face in his hands, and pressed a kiss to her mouth so ardent that it drew a sound from both of them. His arm locked around her back and pulled her closer against him, impossibly closer, crushing the length of her body against his as he kissed her and kissed her, drawing on her lips as a drowning man draws breath. Somehow, Christine managed to move her arms, freeing them from the press, and they wound around his middle. The fabric of his waistcoat rippled under her fingers as she clutched it, answering his urgency with her own, even though it frightened her. He uttered another desperate sound into the kiss, and it was swallowed in the softness of her lips. The thought fluttered wildly through her head that this was music, too, and she would not have believed until that moment how sure was its power to transport her. There was no cemetery, no hour on the clock, no night. For Christine, the two of them shone like roman candles, blotting everything else from the senses.

After what may have been a minute, or an hour, the mortal need for breath at last demanded its due. The kiss broke, but they allowed only enough space between them for the passage of air. Their ears were full of the sound of their own panting breath, and they each listened raptly, needing no other sound in the world. At least until Christine regained enough breath to speak.

"I love you," she cried softly, drawing another rapturous sigh from the man in her arms. "I love you. Even as I hate you. The things you've done. All that you've ruined. I hate you for it. But I love you, too. And I cannot stop it, no matter how much I try."

"Christine!" Her name trembled on his lips, barely escaping his heart-choked throat. "Christine, I –" The words he wanted scattered and fled him, refusing to come, owing no obeisance to him who had never called on them before. "Please," he gasped. He had never begged forgiveness from anyone, and didn't know the way of it. Words failed him. But song never had. He may not have the words, but he had the music for what he felt. If only he could wrest control of his instrument from the riot of emotion in his breast. Christine's attention sharpened when he loosened his throat with a hasty swallow, and forced his lungs to work by pulling air in deeply, again more deeply still. With the power he possessed, he transfigured that mundane air in his lungs to music, and the strains of it filled the air with its perfect remorse.

" _Contesssa, perdono. Perdono, perdono...!_ "

Even the howling certainty of Christine's love took pause to consider the answer. Count Almaviva had been asking forgiveness for his unfaithfulness. The Opera Ghost asked forgiveness for lies, extortion, betrayal – for murder. Could such forgiveness be given? Could it stand there in the same place as Countess Almaviva's? Should forgiveness be granted to someone who denied it to others, to someone too resentful to pardon the unkindness shown to him in the past? Long, the aching moment of judgement stretched. She feared suddenly that she had never sung the part, and may not recall the words or hit the notes correctly, and so realized what her answer was.

Christine's lungs expanded in the circle of his arms.

" _Più docile io sono,_ " she sang, _"e dico di sì._ "

Sweet notes of absolution twined around him. When her hand reached up to cup his cheek, she found his head thrown back in ecstasy, his face turned up to the moonless sky as if the sound came straight to him from heaven. When the moment came, he drew breath with her, and his voice wound with hers through the exultant refrain. The words came, though she had never sung them for anyone before, words of acceptance and joy. The beauty of the scene had imprinted itself on her mind long before she had known even one word of Italian, and now the words and notes flowed through her effortlessly as though they had just been waiting there, in her memory, for that moment. Her high notes pierced the dark. Each one sent a shudder through her partner, but he did not fail to rejoin the song on his cues. They lacked the rest of the ensemble, the orchestra, an audience, but none of it mattered. None of it diminished the beauty of their melody.

As the last repetition quivered on the air and died away, he bent his head to kiss her once more, and for another age they were lost in that sweet press of mouths, oblivious to everything but each other. When they broke apart again at last, gasping for breath, he spoke.

"I will be yours, forever, Christine. Everything I do will be for you. Every thought, every breath, shall be yours. Such music I will write for you, Christine. Such music, that the heavens will weep, and send flights of Seraphim to reclaim you. But I shall do battle with all the armies of heaven and earth to stay by your side, my Christine!"

She laughed breathlessly.

"Do battle with the angels?" she chided him, "why, when they would only need to hear you sing with me to accept you into their ranks."

Any laugh she had ever heard him utter before had been born of bitterness. But the one that burst from him then was born of joy, and her heart broke at the beauty of it.

* * *

 _The music (FFN won't let me give proper links, so replace DOT with . ):_

 _Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) by Mozart, Act 4, "Contessa, Perdono" (_ youtuDOTbe/t2yrDWEoCpc _)_

 _"_ Contessa Perdono _" is, for me, one of the most glorious pieces of music in all of opera, and I love it with all my heart._


	5. Seduction

Christine had never been sure of the Phantom's age. She knew that he had crept and climbed and maneuvered his way through all the difficult passages of the opera house, fleet as any of the young flies and nimble as a dancer. By his cunning and strength, he had made himself master of that place, from top to labyrinthine bottom. But she knew he could not be young. Appearances alone told her nothing; in the moments when she had seen him bared to the light sans mask and wig, hunched and flinching from the rake of her eyes over his hideousness, he had seemed centuries old. Like some husk cursed to walk the earth far longer than was natural. But she knew he could not be that, either. It was by his manner that she managed to guess. When he crooned to her through the mirror in the guise of the father figure she had longed for, when he growled out his censure of Raoul's youth and boldness – by these clues, she guessed him to be, perhaps, twice her own age at least. But in that moment, she would never have known.

Joy stripped away those guessed-at years. That low simmering hatefulness, his armor against the world, long labored over in the lonely dark, was suddenly forgotten. It left him free and light. He kissed Christine with abandon, and did not flinch when her fingers caressed his face. He wrapped her in his arms and spun her around to music only he could hear. She gasped, and laughed, and he laughed with her, and they forgot that it was a cemetery they danced in. Song burst out of him, incandescent and joyful, and it squeezed at Christine's heart so that she felt she could not breathe.

" _Nuit d'hyménée! Ô douce nuit d'amour! La destinée m'enchaîne à toi sans retour!_ "

Surely no tenor on earth had ever embodied Romeo's triumph so completely. But the Phantom managed without even a hint of affectation, for Romeo's rejoicing was his own.

" _Ô volupté de vivre! Ô charmes tout puissants! Ton doux regard m'enivre, ta voix ravit mes sens!_ "

He stooped, and she found herself suddenly weightless, whisked up from the ground into the cradle of his arms. Christine's joy and excitement still bubbled up in her laughter. But her own arms, flung around his neck, began to tremble.

" _Sous tes baisers de flamme! Le ciel rayonne en moi! Je t'ai donné mon âme. À toi, toujours à toi!_ "

She felt him move, felt him stride across that consecrated ground with the pride of a king, and her a treasure in his arms. Exhilaration coursed through her. And yet, her trembling increased with every powerful step he took. She didn't know where he was taking her; but that in itself didn't truly matter. As she had reminded him earlier that night, she was no child. Though their destination remained a secret, she was in no way ignorant of what it was he carried her towards.

" _La destinée m'enchaîne à toi sans retour!_ "

He must have had the gift of sight in the dark, or else he knew the cemetery grounds as well as he had known the opera house. He carried her along with surety, and made not a single misstep. With a dizzying twirl, he swung her to the side so he could throw his shoulder against some barrier in their way. Christine heard the creak of hinges, heard the sound echo back from walls of old stone. Musty air momentarily choked her – dust and wax, oil and incense. At the far side of the room, a tiny light flickered in protest at the intrusion of the night air. A chapel, she thought in dawning horror. Their bridal bed, a chapel! Her sin seemed compounded a hundred fold. With a nudge of his foot, the door groaned and slid towards closed again. She felt smothered in the sudden stillness of the air.

"... Christine..."

He paused long enough to feel her trembling, and realized all at once that she was shaking like an aspen leaf in his arms. He cradled her closer, protective, and his voice went soft with dismay.

"Beloved Christine... Why are you afraid? Do you think that I'd harm you?"

"I'm lost," she whispered. "Oh, what is to become of me! I'm lost... is this heaven? Or some hellish snare I've caught myself in..."

The Phantom stood, for a moment still a youth again, despairing and uncertain in the face of his lover's distress. She was a girl, of course, looking with terror over the cusp at the imminent plunge into womanhood. He felt just as young, standing with her on that same precipice. But it was a cruel world, he reminded himself. One that filled its men-folk with eagerness for a thing that maidens were left to guess at and fear. His years caught up with him again, and he pressed a gentle kiss to her brow, at once wishing to protect her from that terror but also to rush towards it with her, to show her that it was nothing to be feared at all.

There was no question as to which impulse would win out.

With renewed determination, he carried her deeper into the chapel. Christine heard the change in the echo of his footsteps as he brought her out of the wide open space into some secret corner, snug and sheltered. She heard her shallow breath grow loud in the tightening space. The tiny glimmer of the sanctuary light disappeared. She hoped that meant that they were not in view of the alter, or the crucifix above it.

Very gently, he laid her down, and knelt by her side. She felt something rough beneath her. It was scratchy under her hand, and lumped awkwardly under her back, but still she was grateful for any barrier between her and the cold stone of the floor. He snatched for something in the dark, then carefully lifted her head to pillow it with some stolen pew cushion or some other soft thing, tenderly laying her head back down on it. His nimble fingers wove through her curls and brushed the errant ones away from her face in a caress as soft as velvet. It must be his own bed of these last few months, she thought. Evicted from his chambers in the opera cellars, he'd stolen the corner of a neglected chapel and feathered it with what few human comforts he could find.

"It is heaven, Beloved," he whispered, his voice as velvety soft as his touch. "Let it be heaven. Only heaven. A paradise of our own. I will show you, how sweet and warm and wonderful it can be. If you only trust me..."

She did not refuse him. Nor did she accept. She lay still where he had put her. And still he could feel her shaking. Her breath quickened when his body moved, but he only eased himself down lower beside her. There was a swish of fabric, and the warmth of his cloak fell over her.

"Do you remember...? The darkness, the music? Do you remember your night with me, when I brought you down into my domain?"

"As if I could forget," she said in the barest whisper.

"No harm came to you then. None will come to you now. Your angel is with you, here in the dark."

Christine wanted to remind him that her trust in him was mislaid, however gentlemanly he may have been that first night. But his hand caressed her face in that moment and stole her breath.

"I love you, Christine." His fingers trailed down her neck. "With every fiber of my being, I love you." They whispered across her breastbone. "Every note I write, every word, they are all dreams of you." Over the sleeve of her coat, the ruffle of blouse at the cuff. "I am never complete until you are with me." His fingertips like fire against the skin of wrist. He guided her hand up to his face and kissed her knuckles. "Do you dream of me, too?"

The press of his lips against each finger made it difficult for her to answer, but at last she managed, "Yes. I dream of you. I dream of the dark, and of you..."

He turned her hand to kiss her palm.

"...And do the dreams ever leave you aching...?"

His mouth against her wrist made her shudder. She couldn't remember the bare skin of her wrist ever feeling like such a terribly intimate place before that moment. And it was the same with every inch of her arm until the cloth of her sleeve prevented more. She wondered if the admission would cost her her soul. She didn't dare to answer. Until she felt his face close to hers in the dark. Close, so close. The kiss was there on his lips, just out of reach. But he did not move that final inch to give it to her.

" _Yes,_ " she breathed.

Her hand turned to cup his face to pull it closer, and he obliged her with a long kiss that left both their heads swimming. His fingers seared their way back up the length of her arm. There was the barest brush of his knuckles against the side of her bodice, and then the flat of his hand, warm and wide, smoothing over her stomach.

"...What do I do, in those dreams, Christine...?"

It felt as if all the air in the room had gone thin, and she could not get enough of it.

"...You... possess me," she gasped softly.

"Possess you," he echoed. His lips brushed over her neck with the words.

Her head pressed back into the cushion to arch her neck into the kiss. "Ooh, God," she breathed.

His palm stroked across her body and up the other side, sliding in turn down that arm and grasping her other wrist. He pulled it close to his face. She gasped aloud to feel the warmth of his mouth close around two of her fingers, engulfing them to the third knuckle before pulling back again.

"My Christine," he murmured against her fingers, then moved to draw another two in. She had never imagined it, never dreamed that the soft heat of his mouth over her fingers could wake such sensation in very unrelated parts of her person. Last, her thumb, and then another burning kiss against her wrist. "When I _possess_ you... in these dreams... Do I sing to you...?"

"Ohh, yes," Christine whispered, "yes, there's always music."

He dipped low once more to kiss her mouth, more deeply than before, and she reached up to clutch his shoulder and hold him to her. When the kiss broke, his voice was as breathless as hers.

"Then I have dreamed the same dream. The two of us becoming one in the dark. And to wake from it felt like being driven from the garden."

He cupped her face, brushed his thumb across her lips, and shuddered softly when they parted to kiss it.

"Christine... Angel... do you want that dream to become real...? And never ache at the waking?"

"Ohh, God," she cried softly, "ooh, God in heaven, forgive me."

His lips at the hollow of her neck.

"God in heaven. Yes."

His voice beginning to sing, low and soft in her ear.

"Yes!"

* * *

The night air slid its fingers through the crack left in chapel door. It stirred the ancient dust, and swirled between the pews. It caught the softly uttered sounds from the sacristy as it passed that way, and bounced them between the stone walls. Far from the door it wandered, brushing its fingers at last across the sanctuary candle.

The little flame flickered, guttered, and died.

* * *

 _Author's note: The music Erik is singing is the tenor's part of the bridal night duet in Act 4, scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet. Juliet has forgiven Romeo for killing her cousin Tybalt, professing that she still loves him, and they sing a beautiful duet together before consummating their marriage. Not only did this seem perfect for the moment, it is also a nod to Leroux. In the novel, the Phantom announces himself to Christine by singing this scene to her, calling her to him. And he does it so sweetly that even Raoul is enchanted by his voice. ;) A snippet of this scene can be heard here (replace DOT with a . ): (_ youtuDOTbe/1dboNnVcnXw _)_


	6. Le Petit Mort

_Author's note: Be ye warned - gratuitous bodice ripping to follow._

* * *

Music poured from his lips over her skin, over her mind, setting everything on fire. It wasn't anything she'd ever heard before. It probably wasn't anything he'd ever dared let her hear before. It was beautifully soft and full of longing – but a very earthly longing indeed. That angelic voice extolled the virtues of a woman's body in details that she, a woman, had never heard before. It painted descriptions that left her gasping in shock as much as anticipation. Her stomach felt so full of fluttering wings that it hurt.

And all the while, his hands roved over her, leaving trails of fire in their wake. Every place that he kissed was set aflame under his mouth, then turned to ice by the cool night air as he moved to the next.

His hand swept up the length of her bodice, soothing the fluttering of those wings in her belly as it passed. She could feel the heat of his palm through the fabric, the hint of pressure through the barrier of whalebone. And she could feel her own body respond beneath the garments that separated them, like it was a thing that did not belong to her at all. A sound escaped her throat, equally beyond her control. His hand paused to clutch her greedily for a moment, and his next breath of song sounded, to her, a little hungrier.

Down again his hand roamed, and for the first time, it dared to stray beyond the confines of her bodice. He found the shape of her leg through the many layers of her gown and followed its length, as far as he could reach. The return journey did not follow the same path, but swept inward to find the limits of her thigh. Her breath sped, and then hitched to feel the barest ghost of a touch there where her two legs met. The many fabrics of her gown prevented it from being anything more than a suggestion. A suggestion that made her legs stir and rub together. He repeated the caress, and then again, until she thought she might go mad with waiting for what was next.

"Please...!" she gasped, appalled at the urgency in her own voice. She wished she could take it back, unsay it, erase it from history. Instead she repeated, more softly, "oh, please...!"

He sprang up, eager to oblige her, but was almost immediately hindered by that formidable abundance of gown. Was he to kneel upon it, trapping the fabric between them? Did he dare take steps to remove it? Would he frighten her if he tried? But Christine found she had no patience for his delay. Every moment he was not touching her was a moment that threatened to break the spell, and drain her of her courage. So she reached for him, caught his lapel in the dark and pulled him down for a kiss that any Parisian would have been proud of. It pulled an animal sound of desire from him that might have frightened Christine at any other time. But in that moment, she simply swallowed it into herself and sent it down to her stomach to grow wings and flutter.

For a long moment, the Phantom was lost in hungry feasting on her mouth. The dream, made real. But there was more to that dream. So much more. With slow, furtive movements, as if the kiss was a distraction, he found the edges of her gown and pulled them up. Carefully, so carefully, he placed his knee between the restless shifting of her legs. First one, then the other. And then he was there, kissing his beloved, with her skirts pooled at her waist and his body draped long over hers. Her legs rubbed against the outside of his. He moaned into her mouth.

Her hands forged restless paths over his body. They strayed haltingly towards his head, but he caught her wrist before she could come into contact with anything too gruesome. Neither knew if Christine's love was truly blind. If she could see what pressed itself to her body, would it be revulsion she felt instead of ardor in the dark? Both wondered in secret. He dared not let her discover the answer in that moment.

Allowing herself to be deferred, she ran her hands in the other direction. They slid over the lapels of his tailcoat, slipped beneath to feel the hard leanness of his body through his waistcoat, and finally paused when they caught the edge of a button. It was the work of a few moments to run her fingers through them. The waistcoat split apart, the first soldier felled in the army of clothes that separated them.

Louder and louder their breath seemed in the small space as they went to battle in earnest. Their arms bumped and hindered each other, eliciting nervous sounds that were somewhere between apology and desperation and never quite managed to be words. Christine's heart sounded like a drum in her own ears as she felt the confines of her bodice loosen. But her own work went quicker, and his shirt fell open to admit her hands first. The touch made him shudder, and rendered his own deft fingers momentarily useless.

" _Christine_ ," he gasped, his voice close to tears, or worship.

"Hush," she whispered.

Trembling with uncertainty, her hands slid down to the fastening of his dress pants, and paused as if to ask permission. His breath exploded out of him.

The shuffle that followed was desperate, and graceless. Her fingers fumbled clumsily at the unfamiliar fastenings while he finally conquered the remaining bodice hooks. Together, they turned their attention to the last great barrier beneath her skirts, flung the offending undergarment aside, and then rushed back into each other's arms.

Neither knew what to do, only that the tight press of the other's body was bliss, and movement was better. They kissed, and kissed, and hands flew to discover new curves, new heat, new soft, secret landscapes of skin amidst the rumple of half removed clothing. His body took up a clumsy, grinding roll. She arched under his weight, and heaved up to meet the friction of that movement. With every breath, he uttered some new sound of worship against her skin. Some were articulate. Most were not. On and on, wave after wave, with his praise in her ear, and Christine felt as if she were being carried along to some strange, new height. The fitful rub of her legs against his grew desperate. She shifted them higher, twined them around his, canted her hips –

Something caught, and then suddenly gave.

They cried out together. There was a shock of pain, a deep, alien intrusion – then a suffusion of heat that bloomed into something different. Pleasure, so intense she could hardly recognize it as such. Swell after swell of overwhelming, mind-emptying pleasure. His arms snaked under her body to crush her tight against him as he spasmed. Her fingernails pressed dimpled half-moons into his shoulders as she clutched him tight in return. Quivering legs held his body tight against hers through the last few uncontrolled heaves. And then slowly, very slowly, they both relaxed into stillness.

It was an age before either felt they could move again. The epic romances had not prepared them for the sudden hyper sensitivity to touch, or the awkwardness of uncoupling. But all was made right when Christine's head was pillowed on his chest, his arm around her, and his cloak was pulled up to keep them warm. For the first time, they felt peace in the other's presence. Sweet peace with no words. But of course, there was always music. His voice, so soft, singing his wonder into the night.

" _Un solo istante i palpiti del suo bel cor sentir! I miei sospir confondere per poco a' suoi sospir! I palpiti, i palpiti sentir, confondere i miei co' suoi sospir... Cielo! Si può morir! Di più non chiedo, non chiedo."_

Christine closed her eyes and let it take her, drifting languidly with the gentle beauty of his voice.

" _Di più non chiedo, non chiedo. Si può morir! Si può morir d'amor._ "

Every breath became a sigh, and her heart joined him in song. _More I cannot ask. More I cannot ask. One could die of love..._

The romanza came to its end, but the music did not. The Phantom wound the strands of its final notes into a new song in a moment of spontaneous composition. He pulled at the bright threads of feeling in his heart and wove it into song. He sang his love, his joy, waxed long on her infinite beauty, and because it came as naturally to him as the rest, he sang his pride. His pride that she was his at last. The greatest triumph he'd ever known. How he reveled in that victory. And the icing on that cake was thinking now on that bitter winter night when he'd heard someone else lay claim to Christine's heart. How hateful those words had been, then! But now they were his, she was his. His alone. In his querulous pride, he took his rival's words for his own, like spoils of war. He took those crowing platitudes, and turned them into something beautiful for Christine. He sang them back to her with the voice of an angel.

" _Ce soir cheris-moi d'un mot, d'un geste._ "

Her eyes flew open in the dark.

" _Sur un oui, je te sui aussitot."_

The hand that had been resting atop his heartbeat tensed and clutched. No, she thought silently. Please, don't. Please stop.

" _Chaque instant fais-moi toucher les anges._ "

The stolen words woke her guilt, and all her peace and contentment fled before it. Thoughts of Raoul filled her mind. Raoul, her shelter on that snowy rooftop. Raoul, worried for her safety. Raoul, who thought her a pious daughter and faithful bride. Oh, Raoul...!

" _promets-moi pour toujours avec toi. Christine..."_

A sob wrenched itself from her breast.

"...Christine?"

She pulled away from him, and her hands flew to cover her face in her shame.

"Oh, poor Raoul...!"

* * *

 _Author's note: D: ...oops..._

 _Before Erik puts his foot in his big fat angel mouth, he sings "Una Furtiva Lagrima" for us from Act 2, scene 8 of_ L'elsir D'amore _by Gaetano Donizetti. The tenor,_ _Nemorino, has given the girl he desires a love potion; he thinks he is too common and poor to win her any other way. Unbeknownst to him, the 'love potion' is only wine. But when he sees her crying out of love for him, he is sure the love potion has worked, and sings this romanza in celebration. See Pavarotti sing it here:_ youtuDOTbe/2J7JM0tGgRY (take out DOT and replace it with .)

 _His mistake was appropriating "All I ask of you", lyrics borrowed from the french version of the song._


	7. Poor Raoul

_Author's note: HUGE thank yous to those who have left me reviews. It takes time and energy to review, and I hecking love you for it. If you're reading this and haven't reviewed, I love you too. We're fam._

 _Chapter notes - Erik is the worst. He really is. Don't get me wrong, I adore him, but I really do think he'd be difficult to live with. This chapter doesn't flatter him. But, you know, the best part about fighting is making up... ;) See notes below for info on the music._

* * *

Every muscle in the Phantom's body seemed to coil at once. The tender loop of his arm went rigid and sharp as an iron bar.

"... Poor Raoul," he repeated slowly.

She sobbed wretchedly, shaking her head.

"He thinks I'm praying. He thinks I came here to pray. God, if he knew..."

"Poor _Raoul_ ," he hissed through his teeth.

"What will he think of me tomorrow... what will he do... oh, why does every choice I make end in cruelty? Poor, dear Raoul!"

"Dear Raoul!" he snarled, jerking up from their makeshift bed. She rose beside him and groped in the dark for her discarded clothes.

"I must go," she cried. "I must tell him, at least. The wedding tomorrow – "

He snatched for her arm and gripped it painfully tight when he caught it.

"You're not going back to _him_!" he spat. With a wrench, he pulled her back towards their bed.

"I must!" she cried, pulling against his grip. "I won't leave him like this!"

"You think I would let you go back, to be poisoned by his words?"

"Poisoned!" she said, "You mistake your tactics for his. Let me go!"

"And what do you imagine he'll say? Do you think he'll give us his blessing?"

Christine twisted her arm in his grasp, but could not break his grip. "I won't leave him to stand alone at an alter, faced with public ridicule, when the fault is mine. Let go! He deserves better than this!"

"What your pompous, pretending little Vicomte deserves is an unmarked grave, which I pardoned him from once already," said the Phantom, voice full of venom. "He'll get no more clemency from me!"

She stopped struggling, and turned her face towards his voice.

"... How dare you," she breathed.

"He knows you're here?" His voice moved as he turned in the dark, as if looking for something. "You told him where you were going tonight?"

"How dare you!" she said again, voice rising in anger. She gave her arm another wrenching pull, and this time he let her go. She heard him shuffle around in search of something. "You, better than anyone, should know what Raoul deserves, from both of us!" But the Phantom didn't seem to be listening. His voice came, low and furtive, from near the stone wall.

"He'll come after you," he said, speaking more to himself than Christine. "If he finds you, he'll try to take you back. He'll refuse to see me as the man who's beaten him. He only sees a beast. He'll hunt us."

"Beaten him," Christine echoed his words in disgust. She shuffled towards the sound of him in the dark, reaching out to find him by touch, to pull him back towards her and demand that he hear her. "If he's ever thought you beastly, there's littler wonder. You've certainly given him reason. But Raoul will listen to me, if I tell him what is in my heart. He won't move against us if he knows that it's my choice. He listens to me. Unlike you, Sir."

"Did he listen when you told him about your Angel?" he snapped. "Did he listen when you refused your part in Don Juan? Did he listen to any of your warnings?"

She honed in on the angry sound of his voice, the sound of objects being rifled through in his search.

"No, Christine, he doesn't listen, he panders until it suits him not to. And no one in the world has listened to you as intently as I have. No one else heard you at all, until I nurtured your voice. Least of all, _him._ "

Her hands made contact with the wiry stiffness of his arm and clutched it, trying to placate him.

"Please..." She refused to call him Angel. Certainly not when he was acting like a jealous child. And yet she had no other name for him. She had just given her virtue to a man who's name she did not know. "Please, stop. Whether you believe he will listen or not, _you_ can listen. Listen to me." She felt him sit up, felt his arm flex with his grip on whatever it was he had found. "Come back and talk to me instead of behaving like a quarrelsome boy." She felt her way down his arm, intending to take his hand and lead him back by it, but it already clutched something. "There's nothing to fear, if you just – " Her fingers felt the rough twist of rope in his hand and froze.

Horror squeezed its chill fingers around her heart. But it did not hold sway over her long.

"Give me a candle," she demanded, her voice soft and full of fury.

He shook off her hand with a bitter laugh. "And suddenly she grows tired of the dark."

"A candle!"

"What, have you forgotten the face of the man you said you loved?" she could hear the repetitive jerk of his arms coiling the lasso. "Were you imagining the fair countenance of your _dear Raoul_? Perhaps you do need a reminder of what it is you've bedded..."

"It is not for me, but for you!" Christine cried fiercely. "You show your true face here in the dark, Monsieur Ghost! I see it plainly. It is _you_ who are blind to your ugliness without light. Give me a candle, so that you can feel the same shame in yourself that I do in this moment!"

His movement stopped, and she heard only the hiss of his angry breath for a moment.

"...You told me that you loved me," he finally growled in accusation.

"Do you question it?" she asked through gritted teeth. "For I certainly begin to."

"I will not give you back to _him._ "

"I hate you, too, remember. My love and my hate – they are two wolves battling for control of my heart, Monsieur, and you are feeding the wrong one."

"How can you love me, and still call out his name!"

"Is your heart so small that it can feel only one thing at a time?" she asked.

"Yes!" he shouted at her. "Yes, it feels for you! Only for you! There is no room in it for anything else!"

"Liar," she said softly.

He lunged for her in the dark and clutched his hand in her hair, grabbing tight in a moment of fury before he forced himself to loosen his grip.

"Why would you suspect _my_ unfaithfulness?" he hissed.

"Music," said Christine. "You love music, far more and for far longer than you have ever pretended to love me. She is your first love. I am only your mistress." In his confusion, he released her hair, but she didn't move. "I love her, too, and begrudge her nothing. I know you cannot love Raoul. But you only kill my affection for you when you threaten him."

"I do not _pretend_ to love you."

Her hand snatched out and groped until it found the lasso. She tugged on its coils, but he would not release it, so they held it taut between them.

"If you truly loved me, you would never hold this again. You forget your sacred promise to me."

"If _you_ truly loved me, then you would not be so quick to think of him! Is your choice truly made even now? Or did you only intend to stay long enough to sample the forbidden fruit. Was it always your intention to rush back and play maiden for your poor little cuckold?"

Christine struck out blindly at the darkness before her, but only hit his upraised arm. He grabbed her wrist when she tried again.

"You insult me in every possible way." She spat the words at him furiously. "I've given you everything tonight. Everything. My love, my honor, my body, my soul. I've given you my future. And you answer me with spite." She turned her face away from him in the dark. The hand crushing her wrist eased its grip, and she pulled it away from him.

"... He'll come after us, Christine," he said, provoking a humorless laugh from her.

"That is what we whispered in fear of you, before we thought you were dead."

"He should have killed me when he got the chance, if he wished to keep you without fear. I won't make that same mistake again."

She pulled at the lasso with a last desperate tug, but he kept hold of it, and wrenched it out of her grasp.

"Don't make a mockery of everything we've said to each other tonight," she pleaded. But jealousy still blinded him, and he would not hear her. She heard him stand. Her breath quickened in fear as he moved away from her.

" _Poor Raoul_ isn't worthy of your pity yet," he muttered angrily, "but I will correct that inconsistency for you by morning. And then you will be free of the burden of guilt, and he will be saved tomorrow's humiliation. You should thank me."

Christine was too astounded to speak. He brandished the threat of murder before her with all the petulance of a sulky child who was throwing a tantrum. A child, she realized. That was what he was, for all his years. A child who had never had the love of a mother, or any moral upbringing. A child who feared his one and only playmate might prefer the company of her other friends to his. And now his tantrums ended in lassos and mortal terror. _You should thank me_. It was her he truly wanted to punish, Christine realized. Not Raoul, not really.

"I see that Music and I have yet another rival," she said through fresh tears. "Death vies just as strongly for your heart. Music I will welcome, always. But this other bloody mistress I will not tolerate. Give her up, if you wish to have me. It will be one or the other. I hold you to your promise."

"Promises won't do either of us any good when le Vicompte sets his hounds on us," he snapped from somewhere out of reach. "And you are a little fool if you think his _love_ will spare you. He doesn't love you. You are a pretty jewel on his hand that he can replace on his next stroll down Avenue Montaigne. When he discovers us, you will be as hated as I am."

"Give her up, and return to me. Or the two of us will be forever unhappy."

"Your false pity won't stay my hand a second time!"

The power of Christine's voice suddenly rang off the stone walls and filled the space between them.

" _Chi ti salva, sciagurato, Dalla sorte che t'aspetta? In furor hai tu cangiato un amor ch'egual non ha. De' miei pianti la vendetta ora dal ciel si compirà!_ "

The refrain repeated, washing over the Phantom with all the fury of Amneris' spurned love and condemnation. He took the full brunt of it where he stood, there in the portal between the sacristy and the chapel, hearing it echo in the larger chamber behind him. Her voice wrapped its fingers around him and held him fast. He stayed rooted to the spot, even when silence descended again between them. When at last he spoke again, his silky voice had turned hoarse.

"...Radamè did not give up Aida," he said.

"And there was only death, and unhappiness for all," Christine answered softly.

There was another long span of silent moments. And then the blessed sound of a footstep towards her.

"...Sublime as your instrument is, taking a mezzo part would be ambitious."

Tears of relief streamed down her cheeks as Christine closed her eyes, and she happily accepted the backhanded compliment as the peace offering it was.

"Do you doubt your pupil's potential, Sir? Or do you only criticize in an effort to inspire me to improve?"

"Your potential is infinite," he conceded, "but range is given and not taught."

"Ahh, so my master has his limits."

He uttered a low, disdainful hum, and took another step closer. And another.

"Limits can be stretched. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps you only need another lesson to be queen among Contraltos and Sopranos alike."

"Then come and give me my lesson," she said. "and if you still wish to punish me, do it." The sound of his steps paused. "But take your satisfaction in a way that will not blacken your soul and kill our love. I will accept it, if it is what you need. Even though my crime is imagined."

"That other name on your lips was not imagined," the Phantom said, voice low and bitter. Christine sighed.

"I remind you, Monsieur, that I am with you and not with him. That I have given you everything that I have denied him. That in doing so, I have wounded him as surely as you ever could. My choices tonight will probably cause him more suffering that anything you are capable of."

"But I am a monster," he reminded her unkindly. "A creature such as me is capable of anything."

"Angel," she said, pleading with him, "give me the lasso." She held out her hand in the dark. "Come and feed the right wolf. I love you. Do not doubt it. Come, and show me that you love me in return. Please come."

The Phantom let an unhappy silence stretch before giving an entirely unsatisfactory answer.

"Will you hear my conditions?"

Christine let her hand drop and turned her face skyward, blindly beseeching heaven for patience.

"What are the conditions of your love, Monsieur."

"My love burns in me, even after hearing you swear yours to someone else all those nights ago," he growled. "There is nothing you or anyone else can do to diminish it, however much pain it causes me. It will burn in me until the moment of my death. But if you wish to take my weapon from me, then I demand a price."

"I'm still waiting to hear it."

"In exchange for the lasso, you will not utter _his_ name again tonight."

"...not tonight," she conceded softly.

"And if you wish me to stay – "

"Merciful Lord in heaven!" she breathed.

" – If I am not to visit your poor Vicomte, then neither are you. We both stay."

Christine let her head fall with another wretched sigh.

"... You take the most precious of gifts, freely given, and turn it into a hostage," she said piteously. "How cruel has life been to you that you cannot even trust your own happiness?" She heard him swallow, and wondered if he might relent. But she understood, then, how great a task it was that she had taken on. This sacrifice would be the first of many that she would need to endure to begin to mend his brokenness. She wiped the tears from her face, and once again held out her hand to receive the lasso.

"I won't leave," she promised. "I will stay with you, and show you that I am willing to pay as bitter a price as any that has been asked of you."

The darkness stirred, and she felt the sack cloth of their bed snag under his weight. The coils of the punjab lasso met her hand.

With a silent prayer of gratitude, she took the weapon from him, and he let it go.

* * *

 _Author's note:_ _Christine sings a bit from Aida, Act 4 scene 1. (The part is a mezzo-soprano, which would be deeper than Christine would naturally sing, though this little bit would, I think, be comfortably in her range.) Her character, Amneris, tells the condemned man she is in love with that she will save his life, if he gives up his love for another woman. When he refuses, she is full of scorn even as she weeps for his fate. The singing is beautifully angry and has a lovely high note. Hear it here, at about 7:40 - youtuDOTbe/6riddwCK9P0 (remove the DOT and replace it with . )_


	8. The Singing Lesson

Christine pulled the tail of rope from the slip knot, and pried at it with her slender fingers until the whole knot came unravelled. She knew it was only symbolic; if he wished to re-tie the lasso, it would take him less than a minute. But she didn't want to share the room with the thing in its deadly form, and it comforted her to disarm it.

While her fingers worked, the Phantom oozed back down to sit with her on their humble bed. His hand snaked around her middle to hold her. The covetous strength in his arm stirred the butterfly wings in her stomach back to life.

Tossing the rope aside, she assured him, "No one will come." She stroked the wiry arm that held her, trying to soothe him. "We aren't married, only engaged. My evenings are my own, my comings and goings are my own. I came in a cab, and made no promise to see him again tonight. ...He will miss me tomorrow." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "...But tonight, he will assume that I am sleepless with anticipation in my own rooms in the city."

He bent his head towards her, close enough to feel her hair brush against his face, and pulled in deep lungfuls of the smell of her. He didn't like the sorrow in her voice. He didn't like the shadow of his rival in the room, name spoken aloud or not. He didn't like that her attention was divided, only half with him and the rest of her somewhere across Paris. It made him want to act. His fingers itched to have the rope back. His arms longed for the sharp tug, the pull, the struggle. He wanted to attack first, before anyone dared try to take her from him. He would kill a hundred men to keep her, a thousand – all of Paris – to keep her warm and safe in his arms forever. He pulled her close against him and wound both arms tightly around her.

" _My Christine,_ " he hissed.

Her fingers on his arm trembled. She wondered if he even knew he had spoken aloud. With a swallow, she tried to gather the scraps of her courage together. She could not allow the Phantom, the madman in him, to hold sway. She needed to draw out the other tender creature she knew him to be.

"Your Christine," she assented. "And my... Who?" She rolled her head back against his chest to point her face towards his, still blind in the dark. "Who are you, my Angel?" She felt his own head tilt to look down at her.

"You answer yourself in your own question," he said. "I am your angel."

"Even angels have names," she chided him gently. "Michael, Gabriel, Uriel...?"

"Lucifer?"

Her caressing hand froze.

"Lucifer, the Morning Star, led the choirs of angels before he was cast down." he went on, voice soft and snide. "He was created to contain all the greatest instruments within himself, and was chief of music in heaven. The true Angel of Music. I thought you would have known that. Or didn't your father explain before he promised to send him to you?"

"...How appropriate," Christine sighed. "But that is not _your_ name."

"Men like me don't have names."

Christine laid her head against his breast, her ear over his heart, while her hand resumed its caressing of his arm. "Every man has a name," she murmured.

She felt him looking down at her, seeming to consider a less flippant answer. The next sigh from her lips was one of happiness as she felt the jealous grip of his arms soften.

"Perhaps it is more truthful to say, that men like me have many names. I've collected quite a few of them over my life. But tonight, here, with you in my arms, none of them fit me. None of them name me. I am your Angel of Music, if I am anyone, because that is the name that brought you to me. That is the only name that I have ever loved for myself, because it came from your lips."

Christine closed her eyes in the dark, and pressed closer against him, feeling a wave of love and pity wash through her. She pulled in a deep breath with her face against his skin. The smell of him, beneath the light sweat of their recent endeavors, was warm, and clean. How could a man who had lived in an underground cistern, and then a graveyard, mange to be so fastidious, she wondered. She nuzzled her face against him, and he dipped his own to press it again into her curls.

"...But your true name," she said with gentle persistence. "The name you were given when you were born...?" She felt his warm breath in her hair, expelled in a silent laugh.

"The name given to me by a mother who found me too disgusting to look at? That name was never spoken with love, why should I keep it? I abandoned that name long ago."

She gave his arm a gentle squeeze, and wished for a moment that she might go back in time to those formative years and change them. " _I_ might speak it with love, now."

"I would rather leave it behind."

Christine lifted her head. "Will you sign all your future letters _A. M.,_ then?" she asked with a teasing lilt to her voice.

"Would you take back my cherished appellation, Mademoiselle?"

"All things now considered, it does seem a little too grand for every day use."

"You didn't mind it before."

"I didn't know you were a mortal man, _before_ ," she said wryly, slipping her hand beneath the cloth of his open shirt to caress up his side. Cheeks burning, she said in a softer voice, "...I know it very well, now."

Her touch made him breathe deep with excitement, and she heard him swallow. But when he spoke, his voice held nothing but authority.

"...If you truly wish a man's name for me," he said, "then perhaps I have one for you."

Christine opened her eyes wide in the dark, feeling the hair on her arms prickle and the butterflies run riot. It was not the greedy Phantom, or even the tender lover who spoke. That voice, dark and silky and sure, was the one she knew best, the one she had waited for in the solitude of her dressing room, the voice of her otherworldly teacher.

"Tonight, for you, I will be Gualtier Maldè."

Christine sat up to face him in her surprise.

"I think you are right, and that you should have your singing lesson."

"N-now?" Christine spluttered, "Here?"

"It is long overdue."

"But..."

"Am I to assume," he said darkly, "that you have not been practicing in my absence?"

Christine quailed at the disapproval in his voice. "I have – I sing every day. But not... Not Gilda. I haven't sung Gilda since our last lesson..." How long ago that seemed, so far away it might as well have been a different world.

His tongue clucked with a disappointed _tsk._ "Verdi spurned, and my hard work neglected. Very well, then we must catch up. Scales. F major to begin."

Christine sat in shock a moment, feeling disoriented, and did not respond until prompted with a soft but severely spoken, " _maintenant._ " Then, haltingly, she disentangled herself from his embrace. He rose to his knees and moved to situate himself behind her, a looming presence at her back that waited for her to position her body correctly. She sat up tall, lengthened her neck, and tried to relax her upper body. But nothing on her body wanted to relax. The light touch to her neck sent an excited thrill zipping through her, confirming that this would be a very different lesson than any he had given her through the mirror.

"Open," he demanded with a brush of his fingers on her throat.

A shuddery breath escaped her before she strove to comply. She yawned and stretched and pulled deep lungfuls of air through her nose and mouth to open the portals of her throat. When he deemed it sufficient, his voice hummed a perfect F to prompt her, and she began her scales. Up and down she went before he walked her down to D minor, and lower and lower still to find the limits of her range and challenge it. "My divine _coloratura_ can be a mezzo if she wishes it," he purred in her ear, "if she strives every day." Then up again, up into the lofty heights to stretch her voice in the other direction. And with every note she accomplished, she amazed herself, because it was impossible to focus on the work. Every moment, she anticipated the next touch of his hands. His finger swiping a line up the back of her neck to remind her to hold her head high. Hands firm and demanding on her shoulders to tell her to loosen and drop them.

"Good," he said at last. "But I see what the focus of our lesson must be. In a chorus, it is easy to hide one's inattention. But when you are the leading lady, you must inhabit the role. There will be a thousand and one distractions to swarm around you, peck at you, pull at you. Critics. Admirers. The pinch of an ill-fitting costume. Emperors and Kings in the audience." His lips brushed her ear as leaned close. "Thoughts of what awaits you after the show... But it is your solemn duty to the music to ignore them all. You must be in the music. _Feel_ it. So I charge you with this for our lesson. Whatever the distraction, _chère fille_ , you must sing. Discipline your mind and body and sing, above all else."

Christine almost laughed. Almost. She wouldn't dare. But she could not even imagine success with all the distraction that was promised in his voice. Still, she felt that old longing boil up, that desperate longing to make him proud of her.

"I'll do my best for you," she promised, as she always had.

"Good," he said again, with more relish than she'd ever heard before. "So. Gualtier Maldè, the first man to come into your innocent world and stir up love in your heart. Precious name, Gualtier Maldè! Just the sound of it on your own lips brings you joy. Yes? You remember how it begins?"

"I remember," she said, feeling far too breathless to sing.

"Then try."

Christine closed her eyes. She willed herself to pretend she was alone. Alone, in room that was her refuge, and her prison, with the love of a father to sustain her, but it was not enough. And then, like a breath of sweet spring air through a winter-stagnant house... Gualtier Maldè. Gualtier Maldè.

" _Gualtier Maldè..._ "

Behind her, the Phantom pulled in a breath at the gentle perfection of her voice. But for Gilda, it was only an echo of her heart's love-sick sigh. Very gently, he brushed his fingers along her arms, urging them up away from her body, encouraging her whole upper half to be tall and open. She raised them up in exaltation of the name.

" _Nome di lui sì amato... ti scolpisci nel core innamorato!_ "

The softest " _brava_ " in her ear, and then his voice skipping softly over the notes that the flutes would play, letting her imagine the guiding hand of the orchestra on Gilda's journey of discovering love. The playful notes danced in the air around them, and as they did, hands pulled whisper soft at the cloth of her chemise, pulling it up, up her body and over her head to leave her bare above the waist.

" _Caro nome che il mio cor..._ "

"Breath," he reminded her softly, "use the breath.

"... _festi primo palpitar –_ "

"Here, and here, and-" his hand pressed soft just between her shoulder blades to dictate her breath at the right moments, " _here."_

The note poured out of her, and she was rewarded with his murmur of approval.

" – _le delizie dell'amor_... "

That dream-like whisper of a touch became firmer. The hands that had been directing her breath spread warm over her rib cage, and pulled in burning trails along her sides. Then, as one line moved to the next, they reversed direction and poured up her body...

"... _mi dêi sempre..."_

– caressing her stomach, her ribs, under the mounds of her breasts –

" _... ram–ah–mentar!"_

"Attention," he scolded her when her voice hitched. He whisked his hands away to prod her back, correcting her posture. "Again, from _mi dêi sempre._ "

She pulled in a shuddering breath – Gualtier Maldè, she thought desperately – and began again at his cue.

Christine managed the first simple stanza without another punishable offense, despite him resuming the exploration of his hands. They were so warm on her skin, so very difficult to ignore. But as she was coming up on the first difficult span of tripping notes, and his fingers were also approaching the sensitive points of her breasts, her voice began to tremble in a way that was not suited to the stage. Mercifully, his touch softened, his fingers went wide of their mark, and she managed the notes without faltering. But the next hurdle was in sight. A note to sustain, and she had no breath for it. It was spent on the anticipation of his touch. His touch, spiraling in once again, teasing towards the summit of her breast, just a moment away from –

A sharp pinch from his fingers made her gasp at just the right moment – "The breath," he reminded her – and she had enough for the note to carry as far as it needed to go. His hands smoothed down her torso with another whispered, " _brava._ "

" _Col pensier il mio desir..._ "

His fingers swept around the waist of her voluminous gown, and found the fastening for it.

"a _te sempre volerà._ "

She felt it give, and his hands at her waist urged her up.

"E _fin l'ultimo mio sospir..._ "

He shifted her carefully, guiding her weight from one knee to the other as he helped to extract her, until she was free of the gown at last and clothed only in the lightest of petticoats.

 _"Caro nome, tuo sarà._ "

There came the lull between the repeat. The Phantom paused with his hands resting lightly at her waist, offering a momentary reprieve. She felt the full weight of his attention. And she was determined not to disappoint. Her voice tripped lightly over the notes without words, relishing that first vocal flourish for what it was, a chance to show off. Each note hung in the air, glimmering, a glass-like thing of beauty, spun with the golden purity of her voice. It was the best she had ever done, despite not having practiced the aria for months.

" _Bravissima_ ," came his breathless whisper. Pride swelled warmly up within her, and carried her into the second half.

Up and down, her voice followed the imagined flutes, stringing the aria with the _bel canto_ gems that Verdi had written for Gilda. He leaned close, pulling her gently so her back rested against his chest, feeling the power of her voice, holding it contained in the circle of his arms. " _Sing_ ," he urged her, and she did, pouring her voice out for him in a decadent cascade of notes that made his heart leap in his chest. It fed his soul so completely, it was almost enough to make him forget the hunger in his body. Almost.

Torment began anew as his hands possessed her in long pulling caresses. But worse was his mouth, pressing kiss after searing kiss against her arm, her shoulder, her neck. Worshiping her skin, feasting on her throat. The assault was too great, it was too much to endure. She bowed back against him, but he reminded her of her work with a rough correction of his hand and growl for, "attention." So she forced her trembling body to hold itself straight, and tall, and sang. _Gualtier Maldè,_ she cried in her mind. Remember, you are Gilda, not Christine.

One hand slid down her thigh to clutch her petticoat, pulling it up in a long slow drag. The other found its mark at last, and palmed over one full breast with kneading pulls.

"Engage," he urged her at the threatening waver of her voice, "engage, and breathe, and _sing,_ for me, you can do it..."

In some distant corner of her mind, where there was still some shred of clarity, Christine noted that his voice trembled as much as hers did. But that did little to help her maintain control. _High note, think of the high note, think of the breath, and the notes, and the flower of your innocence, and Gualtier –_

His hand plunged beneath her petticoat, driving a sound out of her that was nothing like the high note envisioned by Verdi. Her body spasmed and her own hands flew back to grasp any part of him she could reach. Astonishingly, she tried again, managing a few more quavering notes of music before his merciless hands provoked another animal sound of pleasure. She begged him for release. He conceded for them both.

He wrenched up at the back of her petticoat, and pulled her back hard against his lap. They ground together desperately, his hand between her legs fumbling until they aligned, and then with a rush they plunged together again. One arm held her tight against him as he took her, but the other remained thrust down between her legs. He couldn't bring himself to pull his hand away, too captivated by the feel of them coming together in that chaotic pounding of wetness and heat. She found herself pushing into the rub of his palm with shameless abandon, bucking back against him, chasing that explosive bloom of pleasure until it broke over her again in wave after pounding wave. The fluttering squeeze of her pleasure spurred him to move faster, clutch tighter, until he crested that wave just behind her, and they cried out their rapture together.

Slowly, their passion ebbed, and their minds gradually returned to them. When he finally tried to remove his hand from their joining, the touch provoked a flutter of aftershocks, and they laughed with breathless delight in each other. Carefully, the Phantom sat back on his heels, pulling Christine with him in his arms. He held her, his treasure, and couldn't think of any moment in his life when he had ever been so happy.

"I love you more than anything in the world," he murmured. "I love you more than music."

Her sweet laugh filled his ears.

"Hush! You'll make her jealous, and she'll rob me of my voice out of spite!" she said playfully.

"It's true," he said.

She cupped his ruined face in the darkness, hearing in his voice that he meant it. At least in that moment. She pressed a kiss against his forehead, and held his head tenderly agains her own.

"...And I love you, my Angel," she whispered. "...more, even, than music."

* * *

 _Author's note: The aria that Christine practices is "Caro Nome" ("beloved name"), the aria sung by Gilda in Act 1, scene 2 of Verdi's Rigoletto. The opera, and aria, are written in the Bel Canto style, which suits Christine's talents very well. Bel Canto is meant to show off the beauty and skill of the singers, and requires a great deal of discipline to sing well. I don't think Erik ever intended to let her sing the whole thing. ;)_

 _Please listen to Nadine Sierra perform "Caro Nome" here:_ _youtuDOTbe/T7M4_xZyZH8 (DOT = . )_


	9. Only Flesh

_Shout out to my guest reviewer - you are a dear, and though the site won't let me respond to you directly, please know that I value your reviews and am truly grateful for the support!_

 _This chapter went a little fluffy on me. If that's what you like, enjoy. If not, wait a minute. Next chapter has a 100% guarantee of 0 fluff._

* * *

Music breathed life into the ancient little chapel.

It was a humble pipe organ, and small, but it was reasonably in tune. And with the Phantom's help, it filled the tiny church with a truly joyful noise. The notes that poured out of the tarnished pipes scampered gaily between the stone walls. Christine smiled at the sound. She thought she recognized it – one of Bach's French suites. The hardest bit, she thought, dizzying in its speed and complexity. Still, it tumbled out beneath his fingers as easily as "au clair de la lune." It was an incredible display of his skill. But what Christine liked better was the sound of his heart pouring out through his fingers – happy! So happy.

Christine had asked again for a candle; not in anger this time, but to help her freshen herself up. He had obliged, and even brought her a pail of water from somewhere to drink and wash her face. But when she'd moved to light the candle, he'd excused himself, and went out to play on the organ where she could not see him.

He will have to come around to it, and soon, Christine thought, more determined than ever that his looks would not move her feelings even one small inch. Not ever again.

She looked down at the last remnant of clothing she wore, the thin slip of a petticoat, and sighed. There were, of course, no proper towels, and she balked at using the well worn rags he'd offered her. No petticoat in the world could do anything to help preserve her modesty at that point, anyway. It was no great loss. She took it off and used it to wash her face. Then, with a wince, she very carefully wiped the worst evidence of their nocturnal endeavors from her body.

Holding the ruined petticoat near the candle, she saw the expected smear of blood, starkly red on the white cloth. She stared at it for a long while.

A last twiddle of keys signaled the end of the Bach, and he began something new immediately. It was joyful, and grand, and very different from the Bach. Handel, Christine realized. It was Handel, though she had never heard it played alone on an organ - the arrival of the Queen of Sheba. She smiled at the stained petticoat, folded it neatly, and set it aside.

While she had the light, she indulged herself in a look around their bedroom. He had invaded the Sacristy, where the priests vestments were stored in dusty trunks, and a few odd scraps of furniture, candles, and other goods were stored. Their bed sheet was a spread of rough burlap that seemed to be composed of sacks crudely stitched together. There was a small stash of bread, citrus, and root vegetables that she suspected were her Angel's food stores, and a messy stack of sheet music written in his familiar, clumsy hand. She brushed her fingers over the pages reverently, and denied her impulse to look through them. There would be time, later. And she would pour over it all, drink it in, bring it to life with her voice. She would be there for every new creation. She kissed her fingertips, and pressed them to the stack of sheet music in loving promise.

With a last glance around, she began tidying up the orgy of discarded clothes, pulling each item in to fold it and set it aside. She was efficient with her own garments, but lingered indulgently over his. She ran her fingers over his coat lapels, noting that they had not weathered the change in lifestyle well. She smoothed the silk strip of his bowtie, and laid his shirt out carefully to fold it so it did not crease. There were buttons missing, she noticed, touching the rough threads where they should be, and she wondered if she had done that herself in trying to get his shirt undone. The thought set her neck and cheeks flaming, and she hastily set the shirt aside with the rest of his things. Lacking a comb, she did the best she could with running her fingers through her mussed curls, and then wrapped herself in the Phantom's cloak and laid down again.

A well aimed puff of breath extinguished the candle. In almost the same instant, the organ fell silent.

The Phantom returned to her with all the shuffling eagerness of a school boy, finding where she reclined in the dark and slipping under the cloak with her. She opened her arms in invitation, and he gratefully accepted, rushing into her embrace as though he'd been away from her for weeks instead of minutes.

"You played beautifully," she said, "but you don't need to go next time. You don't need to fear the light, not with me. Not anymore."

"... You forget what the light would show," he said quietly, "and that's just as well. But I cannot. And I will not forget the look on your face when you first unmasked me."

She frowned in the dark, and touched his lips with her fingertips to stop his words.

"I'm sorry... I am. But I wish you would forget. Because it won't be that way again. ...This is flesh..." Her fingertips moved to caress his face, but he caught her wrist to stop her. "... It's only flesh. Flesh is so unimportant, in the end. Your fear, our delight... this warm, delicious feeling, or that horror you saw on my face – they are brief things, my Angel. I am young, but I know that much. Flesh isn't what lasts. It isn't permanent."

This sentiment didn't seem to comfort the Phantom. He released her wrist, but only to clutch her body closer, like someone or something might try to snatch her from his arms.

"Flesh is important enough during our time here on earth," he said. "It's enough to condemn a man, whatever might be underneath it."

Her hand stroked gently over his back, feeling the ridges and whorls of old scars there, silent witnesses to the cruelty of the world.

"And that's wrong. You hate it, because you know it's wrong. You wish that it hadn't been so, and so do I. Don't punish yourself on the same false charge. I promise that I will not."

Christine moved in his arms to loosen his grip, and urged him onto his back. He was stiff, and reluctant, but finally obeyed. Propping herself on her elbow, she leaned over him, her hand threatening another caress over his hated deformity, and his own jerked up without conscious command to ward her off again.

"You already let me touch you once, when we found each other, out in the graveyard."

The Phantom's voice shook when he spoke. "I was sure I could not have you, then. So it didn't mat– ... It mattered less, if I frightened you away."

"And you still think me such a child, after tonight? That I'd run away now?"

"You forget your horror. But I do not."

A coolness fell over her voice. "Sir. _You_ forget my horror on the stage, as you whisked me past the dangling body of poor Piangi. You forget my horror, when you thrust a veil at me, when you–" Her hand dropped to his chest, and curled into a fist there. "...When you held another hostage, and bargained for my love with a life. _That,_ Sir, is true horror. Not the childish flinching of a girl who sees your face for the first time."

He did not reply. Beneath her clenched fist, she felt the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and felt his fear. For just a moment, she held onto it. Then she forced her hand to relax, and open, and smoothed her palm over his breast to sooth the flutter of his heart. Gentleness returned to her voice.

"...I have already pardoned your true crimes," she said. "Let me pardon this false one. We've shed the rest of our armor. Let me take this last piece from you, so you can finally rest, and there will be no other barrier between us."

Slowly, like she was reaching for a wild animal that might bolt at any moment, she moved again to touch his face. His fingers clawed into the rough cloth of their bed, and clutched it tightly to keep himself from flinging his arms up to stop her. She heard his breath quicken, as though he anticipated the touch of a hot brand instead of her gentle fingertips. When she made contact, he flinched. But still she would not relent. Her hand served for her eyes in the dark, and explored his ruination in terrible detail.

The first thing she lingered on was the bloated swell of lips that curled back in an unnatural snarl, leaving teeth and gums exposed at the corner of his mouth. She marveled at how insignificant that awful snarl was when he was singing, and still more at how the sweet adoration of his kiss rendered it completely powerless. She bent low to confirm it, and kissed him full on the twisted side of his mouth, drawing a pitiful moan from him as she did. Upwards her fingertips traveled, showing her the strange twine of flesh from his jaw to his cheek. Her imagination conjured up the gruesome image of flesh flayed away from the muscle, leaving it exposed in its grisly layers. Over and over, her fingers traced it, divining its awful shape and feeling it move as he flexed his jaw. And then she bent to press an accepting kiss to that flaw, too. She began to speak in a low, soothing voice.

"... When my father died... I was empty," she said. "Everything I loved had gone away, and I was left here, on earth, without purpose. There was nothing that gave me joy anymore. Not even music. Father's death took all my music away. I drifted through each day, waiting for the one when death would take me, too. And it would have done. I wanted death then, more than I wanted life. ...Until you came to me."

Onward, the exploration went, over ragged edges of flesh and strange smooth spots that were too stiff to be skin. From the cavernous pit that marred his nose to the sharp ridge of his cheek bone. Over skin that was thin and brittle as old parchment, so delicate that she thought it might tear under her touch. Up, around the sunken dish of his eye socket, and the whorls of flesh that twisted away from it to leave him hardly any eye-lid. Each ghastly landmark was thoroughly mapped by her fingers, and to each she pressed a soft, forgiving kiss.

"You may not have been sent to me by my poor father, as I believed in my naiveté... No, the truth was you stalked me like a mountain cat, and I was nothing but a rabbit. ...But you did give music back to me. You made me want to live. You brought beauty, and color, and feeling back into my world. ...Even as you hunted me, you saved me from emptiness, from death. No one else in the world was there for me then. In my grief, I had made myself into an invisible shadow. No one could see me. No one but you."

His hands uncurled from their death grip on the burlap and rose shakily to enfold her. She followed their pull, and slipped her leg over to lay warmly atop him. She felt tears stream freely over her finger tips, and felt his breath hitch in the start of a sob, so she found his mouth again and kissed it to stop it coming. He held her in his arms, and kissed her back helplessly. Long into the night, she kissed him. Until his shaking stopped, and the desperate clutch of his hands relaxed. Long enough that his body responded once again to the warmth and weight of her against him. Tender though she felt from their previous tumbles, she gave herself to him again. And it was different that time. They made love in the dark, slow, and languid, and so gentle that her tenderness ebbed away in the smooth roll of their bodies together. And though she did not quite make it with him to the brink, she held him close when he gasped, and kissed him sweetly to welcome him back down to earth.

When it was done, Christine eased herself back down to lay comfortably with her head pillowed on his chest. She listened to the steady thrum of his heart, heard the precious words that it said to her over and over and over. She no longer felt any dread for the coming day. She longed for the morning. When the sun rose, she would tell him what her heart own heart was saying. The peace of his arms in the dark was too sacred to break – but in the morning, she would tell him that she did wish to marry. That she wished to marry _him_. And he would have to tell her his name, then, because she would take it for her own.

Sleep found them both still entwined, body and soul. And so beautiful was the smile on Christine's face that sleep could not bear to smooth it away, and so she smiled still in her dreams.

* * *

 _Stuff that Erik plays on the organ in his post-coital glee (can't post links so please replace the letters DOT with a . ):_

 _the Gigue from Bach's French Suite #5 in G Major (starts at about 8:10 in this recording): youtuDOTbe/770du8P0UW0_

 _(DOT = . )_

 _Any sampling of the happiest, most regal bits in "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" from Solomon, by Handel: youtuDOTbe/ey_8VSD7fgc_

 _(DOT = . )_

 _So, when I saw Love Never Dies, I didn't really buy the idea that Erik would ever willingly leave Christine once he'd gotten her, once she came to him of her own free will. Certainly not just because of his uggy face. Like, didn't we already cover that at the end of POTO? She kissed him in all his uggo glory, and went back in for more. It just didn't sit well with me as his sole motivation in the act of giving up everything he wants most. So I wrote this chapter to put that idea to rest._


	10. Eriach

_Author's note: **PLEASE READ** Very dark material ahead! While there are no graphic descriptions, this chapter does contain murder, torture, and a whole lot of nasty stuff. If you are sensitive, please be warned._

 _If you go by Leroux's novel for Erik's backstory, Erik's got a very serious dark side and a whole mess of murder under his belt. I'm going to flash back to some of it here._

* * *

 _Eriach (pronounced "air-eck") - Old Irish law dictating that a murderer provides compensation to the family of the murdered person_

* * *

Erik's sleep was peaceful. Dreamless. But peace didn't keep good company with Erik, and spirits stir in the hour of the wolf. Dreams came in the end, muddying the clear waters of his sleep, dredging up old memories, old lives. So many old deaths. Death, when it was new to him... those cold, cloudy days in Europe... Erik twitched in his sleep and shied away from that dream. There were other memories he didn't mind so much – warm, rosy hours... his years in the sun. Warm, like Christine in his arms, in his bed. Warm and full of industry...

.

The lasso was a comforting rasp in his hands. It was like part of his arm. _The Rope that Chokes,_ they whispered in the palace at Mazanderan. Yes, it was as much a part of him as his own hand. An external twist of muscle. _The Master of Traps. Let him pass, let him pass. Don't look at his face, or he will put you in the room with the hanging tree. He will catch you with his lasso. Let him pass._

 _._

 _._

 _Eriach... Eriach... the threat of rain at the edges of his mind..._

 _._

 _._

He was known by almost everyone in Mazanderan as the _Master of Traps_. But the Sultana had her own pet name for him. To her, he was _Sedoyeh_ – her Beautiful Voice.

"How long can you keep his face blue?" asked the little Sultana. "Such a pretty shade of blue! Practice, _Sedoyeh._ It's dull when they go pale and fade away. Bring me another, and keep him _blue,_ as long as you can!"

When he walked through the palace, they parted for him like he was death itself. He was a favorite of the little Sultana. He had a place and a purpose. All their eyes slid away. No one looked. No one dared. ...Except the Daroga... But Erik didn't mind. He was protected by the Shah. Everything he did was by command of the Shah himself, or his bored little wife, the Sultana.

.

.

 _Eriach... Thunder rumbling in the distance... A baby crying out in the icy cold..._

 _._

 _._

She summoned him in the rosy hour between afternoon and evening. That was her favorite time to play. Sometimes Erik was working when she called for him, buried in his love of beauty and artifice. Sometimes he had to hide his frustration at being pulled away. But even in those times, she usually made it up to him. She gave him power, and she gave him praise. And better than all of that, she gave him endless opportunity to take revenge on the cruel race of man.

"Three more criminals today, _Sedoyeh_. Use them to teach me how to throw the lasso!"

"Do not break his neck, _Sedoyeh_ , I want to see him dance! Sing a song for him to dance to!"

"I overheard a man, at last night's banquet, boasting of seeing your face... He said so many unkind things, I knew he could not have really met you! So I had him brought here to be your guest today. Show him your lasso, _Sedoyeh_! I know he will find it as interesting as we all do."

.

.

 _Eriach..._

 _Eriach...!_

 _ERIACH!_

The shock of cold rain poured over him, down his face, down his arm, down the rope clutched in his fist.

"Eriach!"

There was a dead man at his feet. A _dead man_. A fully grown man, who had been living, until he himself had squeezed the life out of him. Him. With his own hands, and a rope. Just a brief struggle, and he had stopped the man from jeering. Stopped it forever. One less man who would stare, and laugh, and curse him. One less, and he'd done it. _It was easy._ How long had he been strong enough to do that? How long had he gone without knowing how easy it could be to make them all stop?

"Eriach!"

The dead man lay face up in the mud, unblinking in the pouring rain. His face was the perfect shade of blue...

"Did you do this?"

The rough Romani voice of his keeper made him jerk his gaze away from the dead man. The voice put the smell of straw in his nose, the cut of leather on his back. It put cold fear in his belly.

" _Diavol_ , you kill a man?"

"Yes, Baba," he said. Cold fear that made his stomach sick. There would be pain now. That's what the voice promised.

"Eriach!"

The woman's cry made it through to him this time, made him jerk his head back again. He'd forgotten about her. But there she was, hunched over the dead man. Mud oozing into her skirt. A wailing baby slung in one arm. She sheltered it from the rain as best she could.

"Eriach!" She screamed again.

"What's she saying?" he asked the Romani. His voice was so strangely flat in his own ears.

"You kill a man, _Diavol_ , and you put us all in trouble."

"What's she saying," he asked again. Another day, he wouldn't have dared ask a question twice. But there was already pain coming. Nothing he could do to stop it now.

Spit flew from the Romani's mouth and a spatter of words followed it – one unfamiliar tongue, then another. Then German. Then English. Ah –

"They come over the sea, to make new life," the Romani said as the woman babbled English at them. "Man driven out of their country. She has nothing. Can't feed baby. Her man, you kill him, and she has nothing for baby. She is sorry that he laugh at you. Very cruel. But she asks for... _What is? Ereek?_ ...She say a murderer owes family in her country. It is law. She say you take her man, then you give her money, so she and baby can live without him. Ha!"

The rough hand slapped his shoulder hard enough to make him stagger.

"Next time, kill man who has money in his pockets, yes? What good is dead man who has no money."

 _Next time...?_

"But, is good you pick a stranger to kill, _Diavol._ Easy to clean up, and no one will miss them. Good practice. I whip you good for making danger to our Family, but still... You do better than I think you can, huh? Big man, but you handle him. Good arm with the rope. Maybe I teach you more than voice tricks."

"Eriach...!" the girl cried again. When he flicked his eyes over her, she was staring at his face.

"Here, _Diavol –_ you clean up your mess."

Rough hands pulled the baby out of girl's arms. It bawled at the shock of cold rain on its face. With a wrench, the Romani pulled the girl up by her hair and shoved her towards him. Her scream of pain rang in his ears. It could be heard years and miles away in Persia, where the little Sultana laughed and clapped her hands. He stumbled back a step, afraid of her touch, and she fell at his feet in the mud.

"Eriach," she sobbed.

" _Ereek! Ereek!_ " the Romani laughed. "Murderer's debt. Ha! Give her what is owed, _Diavol._ Clean up, like good boy, and maybe I don't beat you, eh?"

He didn't think. He moved to do what he was told, and to avoid the pain. Like the monkey that the Romani kept who was trained to play the cymbals and dance and pick pockets. He paid his debts to the girl with the rope in his hands. It didn't feel good, not like it did when he'd strangled the man who had laughed at him. The girl had never laughed. Not once. Not even when she'd seen him in the cage at the Romani camp. She barely struggled at all. He let her slump back to the mud when he realized he'd broken her neck. The rain on his face was so cold. It trickled under his mask.

The Romani whipped him that night anyway.

His keeper laughed for many days about that day in the rain. A murderer's debt! It tickled the Romani to his toes how stupid the Europeans were. Ereek became his name in the Romani camp. Lessons in the skill of murder became part of his daily routine. He learned to pick a mark, to avoid a struggle, to keep it quiet, to wait for just the right opportunity...

It wasn't long before he found the opportunity – and courage – to use the rope on his keeper.

He fled the cold rains of Europe and chased the warmth. Through a mixture of theft, murder, begging, and earning, he made it all the way to India. There he found a weapon that suited him perfectly, and he made himself a master of it. He stopped wandering for long enough to find honest work, apprenticing with an architect and surpassing him within a year.

Far away, in Persia, the Shah heard rumors of a man of many talents. A human oddity, as strange to look at as he was beautiful to hear. A singer, an artist, an architect, a magician. Hands as clever as a Romani fiddler and voice as soft as the finest silk. The Shah detested wondrous things that he could not own, and desired a new palace at Mazanderan. To that end, Erik was invited to Persia.

.

.

"I am giving you a gift, _Sedoyeh._ She's for you. Just for you! Ahh, isn't she pretty? Kiss her! Kiss her!"

The little Sultana laughed at the idea of beauty kissing Death's face.

"Kiss her, _Sedoyeh_!"

He didn't want to. He knew what would happen, as well as the little Sultana did. But it was the rosy hour, and he was hers to command. So he puckered the gruesome snarl of his lip in a way that would please her. And oh, how she laughed. The girl who was his gift laughed too, and pulled away. He pushed his face towards her again. She flapped her hands with a shriek and a smile and dodged the other way to avoid him.

"Oh no," cried the little Sultana through her laughter. "How cruel she is! Hold her still, _Sedoyeh_! Give her a pretty necklace, that will tame her. Yes. Gently, now, gently... it takes a soft touch to woo a lady. Oh yes, that's better, isn't it. Kiss, now, _Sedoyeh_. Kiss her. ...Oh? Why do you hesitate? Isn't she pretty after all? Are you shy? It is only the Daroga and I who are looking. Come, _Sedoyeh_. Show me your gratitude for your gift. I will see you have your kiss. I demand it."

.

He strangled six other men that day. But he took no pleasure in it. The lasso could never fly far enough to reach the Sultana's little neck. And the comforting twist of the rope in his hands did nothing to erase the memory of his first kiss.

.

 _Don't look at his face. He'll strike you dead with his eyes._

 _The Master of Traps has made something new._

 _There is a metal bull that roasts a person alive and turns their screams into singing._

 _There is a bed that stretches a person like taffy if they try to get even a moment of sleep._

 _What will the Shah command him to make next?_

 _What new entertainment does the Sultana demand?_

 _._

"Sing, _Sedoyeh_. Fill the palace of Mazanderan with your voice. How lovely is the voice of my carrion crow! No one in the world has a bird who sings so well."

His voice carried beautifully in the palace at Mazanderan. It did so because the Shah had wanted the screams of his prisoners to be heard from one end to the other. He was very proud of that palace he built for the Shah. Such beautiful arches, such graceful domes. Cream and gold and beautiful blue to please the Sultana. He filled it with music and he filled it with screams, depending on her mood.

"Now make _him_ sing, _Sedoyeh_!"

And she would ask her lady's maids which singing they preferred. They never knew which was the right answer. Answer wrong, and Erik would get another kiss.

.

His rope sang out in longing for the Sultana's pretty neck. He twisted it in his hands to quiet it. He distracted it with a hundred other necks instead.

.

"Erik."

He turned to see the Daroga striding towards him. The look on his face reminded him of rain. The crack of whips and the smell of straw.

"The Shah commands me to say to you that he is pleased with the new torture chamber you built for him. It is the jewel of his palace, and he thanks you for it. He will put it to the most excellent uses."

The Daroga was looking at him in a funny way. He didn't like it. It made his stomach cold.

"The Shah also commands me to express his regret. For he will not require your services any longer."

He was thrown into the cells from which so many of his victims had come. Erik wondered which of his machines they would use. Perhaps he would take the long journey in the Shah's new torture chamber. He wondered if he would get lost in his own illusion. He would wish for those cold European rains by the end. But no - it should be the rope. That was the way it must be. The rope would weep for him, for none had thrown it so well. He could take comfort in that.

"Erik..."

How miserable the Daroga looked. It might have been him in the cell, sentenced to die.

"Erik, you are a cursed thing. You have been given the hands of an artist, the voice of an angel, and the face of a devil. I have seen everything that you do. And I have seen you hate it, and love it in turns. You could be a great man, Erik. It is in you. But you could be a demon, too, and live your life forever in the rosy hours of the Mazanderan."

"I can't do either if I am put to death."

"I will save you," the Daroga said. "I will give you a new chance to be the man I believe you were meant to be. But there is a price."

"What price?"

"You will promise to me, most solemnly promise, never to kill another soul again."

"All men deserve to die," said Erik. "Every one. I only pick a time and a place for some."

"No more!" the Daroga said sternly. "Your hate will be tamed, or I will not be your friend, and I will not save you from execution. Your solemn promise, Erik."

"And if I break my promise?"

"Then hell will be owed. And it will take what a Murderer owes to it. Be warned, Erik! If you break this promise, it is not your life that you will pay with. It will be far worse. It will be paid with all that you love, instead. Hell will take everything you hold most dear."

"It cannot take what a man loves, if a man loves nothing."

"Every man loves before he dies. And hell is patient. It will wait until the price is highest. For the third and last time, Erik, give me your promise. And if you do, then I myself will risk the wrath of the Shah and show you mercy."

Cold rain pelted him in his cell. Mud squelched as he stepped forward and pushed his hand through the bars towards the Daroga.

"I give my promise to you, Nadir, Daroga of Mazanderan. Save me, and I will leave the rosy hours forever. I will build good things. Things that are meant to add to life. Beautiful things. I will devote my rescued life to that. And I will not kill again. This I swear to you, and to Hell if it is listening too."

... _Eriach..._

Nadir's hand clamped down on Erik's like a vice. He pulled, dragging Erik through the bars of his cell, but strangely there were no bars. There was no cell. Erik stumbled forward into the darkness of his house by the lake. He smiled, and opened his mouth to thank Nadir. But Nadir was gone. It was Joseph Buquet that held his hand.

"There, you see," Buquet said with a grin. "It didn't take so long to find something to love."

Cold. Cold horror in the pit of his stomach.

Buquet pointed, and Erik looked to see his own bed. Ubaldo Piangi stood beside it, his wide body blocking Erik's view of whoever lay there asleep. When Piangi stooped to wake the sleeper, Erik noticed shadowy figures that stirred in the darkness around the bed, faceless and menacing. Bouquet leaned in to whisper conspiratorially in Erik's ear.

"Those are the stagehands who wandered too far," he said. "The ones who fell into your traps. Do you recognize them? No? More's the pity. That one – the one in the dress – she was the casualty of the famous _Chandelier_ _Disaster!_ You do not keep a promise well, my friend."

Piangi straightened, stepped aside, and Erik could see Christine sitting up in his bed. She looked his way, met his eyes, and smiled radiantly at the sight of him.

Erik tried to scream, but he choked without making a sound. He lurched towards her, but Buquet held him effortlessly in his vice-like grip. Piangi threw a rope. It caught around Christine's neck. Other ropes flew, catching her hands, and arms, and legs. Still she smiled. The rope around her neck drew taught as Piangi pulled. Erik struggled as the other ropes drew tight, and her body was pulled in a dozen different directions. He kicked and pulled; he fought desperately to get away. But Buquet just pulled him close like Erik had no more strength than a child. He leaned in, near enough that Erik could smell his breath, and it was the charnel stench of the grave.

"Eriach," he whispered in Erik's ear as they both watched her face turning blue.

* * *

Erik jerked awake with a choked cry.

"Angel?"

Christine was there. She was holding his hand

"It's alright. You're safe. It was only a dream, whatever it was. It's over now, my Angel."

He pulled in gasping lungfulls of air. His hand snapped out to touch her face in the dark, to feel for ropes at her neck, but there were none. She was whole and healthy.

"I'm here," she assured him softly. "I won't go."

Erik swallowed.

He could hear the sound of rain pelting hard on the chapel roof.

* * *

 _Author's Notes:_

 _Warm happy feeling is gone now D:_

 _In the novel, Leroux provides very few details about Erik's past. One, that after running away from home, he fell in with the Romani people (or gypsies) and learned quite a lot from them, Two, that he had been to India and acquired his skill with the punjab lasso there, and Three, that he worked for the Shah in Persia. While in Persia, he designed and built an amazing palace for the Shah, and helped entertain the Sultana (the Shah's favorite wife). The Sultana liked to indulge particularly bloodthirsty delights._

 _Leroux states that 'Erik' is not the Phantom's birth name. It was a name he found 'by accident.' But he never explains what those circumstances were. I make an attempt here with an unfortunate family of Irish immigrants. I_ hope _it works... And I hope, also, that I've managed to provide a convincing reason why Erik might tear himself away from Christine._

 _(to my dear guest reviewer - thank you again for buoying my spirits with your review, friend! You should get a account... That way I could respond directly to you! ;) )_


	11. Adieu

_Author's notes: Short, sad little chapter._

 _I_ am _sorry to those of you who want him to stay. (I want him to stay, too!) - but that's just not what this fic is. This fic really was born out of my desire to figure out_ why Erik would go _. Because LND didn't explain that to my satisfaction. I'm trying to pick apart what his thought process might be._

 _Most of the ways to say "goodbye" in French imply that the two people will meet again. Adieu, though, literally means "until God," and communicates a somber finality._

* * *

The Phantom shivered in the dark like a terrified child. Christine smoothed her hand up and down his arm and caressed his knuckles, trying to bring him back to her.

"It was only a dream," she said again, "just a dream. I'm still here with you. We're still alone. Lay back down. I'll sing for you, and you will forget it. Come..."

She urged him with a gentle pull on his arm. His breathing hitched, and he moved, but not to lay down. Instead, he took both her hands in his own.

"My Christine," he breathed.

"Yes," she said with a gentle squeeze of his long-fingered hands.

"... _I love you_."

She frowned in the dark, for she had never heard such sweet words spoken with such horror.

"...And I love you. Come, lay down again. I will make your next dreams better ones."

"No –" he gasped, then again more gently, "no. ...I'm... alright. I will simply... stay awake a little while. I have never needed much sleep. But, my dear, I am sorry to have disturbed yours. You must rest for tomorrow."

Her frown slid away and a hopeful smile took it's place.

"Tomorrow?" she said wistfully.

"Yes... Dearest... tomorrow. Dawn will bring an end to all our past mistakes... Sleep, Christine."

He took her in his sure hands and guided her head back to the cushion. She obeyed, though something in his voice made her uneasy. A nervous impulse made her catch his hand again.

"You won't leave me? I don't know my way in the dark, like you do."

The puff of breath he let out sounded anguished. She felt his hand tremble again. For a moment, he didn't answer, and there was only the sound of the rain outside. The hesitation frightened her enough that she nearly sat back up. But before she could, he squeezed her hand, and lifted it to his lips to press a kiss to her knuckles. There was no trace of anything wrong in his voice when he spoke. It was sure, and strong.

"I will protect you," he assured her. "Now..." he stroked her curls with his long fingers. "...Go back to sleep, my Dear. Sleep until the new day breaks. ...Here... I will help."

The Phantom began to sing, soft and slow and lulling. It was beautiful. Haunting, and beautiful. At first she listened to the words, and they were strange; nothing like a comforting lullaby at all. But the disquieting gallop of a horse through the night softened to promises of glittering water, and flowers, and days wrapped in gold... until the words blurred and it was just the melodic drone of his voice in her ear. His voice wrapped gently around Christine, stole into her mind, and quietly put to death all the nagging little fears that bothered her. One by one they were silenced, until it was only the music. Distantly, she felt the warmth of the cloak tucked around her. The pleasant brush of his fingers became indistinguishable from the caress of the music on her mind. The Phantom sang for her, and his voice was all there was, until she succumbed again to the peace of sleep.

* * *

.

.

His hand stilled in its caress. Her body rose and fell beneath his hand with the slow, steady breaths of sleep. He did not want the moment to end. This night was his, he understood that. Hell would grant him this night to give him the taste of everything he wanted most. _For if you have not been to Heaven, you cannot truly understand the anguish of being driven out of it._

"...Christine...?"

Erik waited to see if she stirred at his voice.

"...Dearest Christine... will you remember your Angel?"

Her hand twitched in his own as if she was fighting sleep to answer him. His thumb brushed a soothing caress over her knuckles.

"...My Christine... oh, my beautiful girl... I love you... So much that I feel like I might break... like this shell of a body might crack and I could be reborn, something new, something worthy... Christine, I love you so much... and I am sorry for it. So sorry. So sorry..."

He turned his head so that his tears wouldn't fall on the skin of her hand and wake her.

"...You make me want to be something else. Something I never knew how to be. ...But... it's too late for that. Far, far too late. The past cannot be undone. The price of redemption is too high... I could never... _Christine..._ "

Erik hunched in on himself and grit his teeth to silence the sob that wanted to wrench itself up out of his chest. He mustn't wake her. He concentrated on the steady rise and fall of her breath. So beautiful. So peaceful. So alive. He tried to match his own breath to that rhythm. Everything now depended on his own self control.

"...My sins are too great. I have always known that Hell will claim me. You made me think, for a moment, that I might escape... that your grace might save me. That love of you might make a better man out of me... It has... It would... but what I might become does not change what I was. It doesn't change the debt I owe to Hell. And Hell will take what is due. I must suffer for my crimes. I will surely be punished. And the greatest suffering I can conceive of is to lose you. ...I cannot lose you...! I cannot... If you were taken from me... no... But if I... if I give you up, willingly, then I will still suffer, and you will be safe from the sins of my past. I will pay for my crimes... and you will be safe. You'll be safe. Safe from me. Safe from Erik..."

He wanted to pull her up, out of sleep and into his arms. He wanted to murder the whole world to make an empty paradise for just the two of them. He wanted to storm the gates of Hell and burn with his hands around Lucifer's neck, if doing so would secure Christine's safety. But there was only one thing he knew he _could_ actually do.

"...Christine... I must leave you. You have your knight... and your life in the sun, waiting for you. You'll be safe, and cared for. And I will be far away. ...Dreaming of you. ...Loving you. Far away. But, Christine... I will keep my promise to you. I will. I may have broken my word to everyone else, but my promise to you, I will keep. I swear to it. I'll do everything that you asked. And if somehow, it saves me... if I can ever be sure that I've suffered long enough, that I've paid for my sins, and the danger is over... ...but that may never be."

Very gently, he extracted his hand from under hers.

"I will love you forever. My love for you will never die."

Carefully, he bent to touch his lips to the perfect curve of her brow.

" _Adieu, ma bien-aimée._ "

Pulling away from her hurt more than any pain Erik could remember. He had to snatch his hand back so he did not clutch at her the way he wanted to. He wished for the whip over the pain of standing up. To be beaten bloody over having to reach for his neatly folded clothes. Once again, he grit his teeth to stay silent. Without a sound, Erik dressed himself, and retrieved the francs he'd taken with him from the Opera house from their secret hiding place amongst the priests' vestments. He gathered the sheets of music he had scribbled down in his loneliness, and tucked them into his waistcoat. He reached for the rope that Christine had tamed. For a moment, his promise made him hesitate, and stilled his hand. But his brain conjured visions of the rope snaking to life, animated by some hellish power, twining itself around Christine's neck as she slept - Erik snatched the rope from the stone floor and took it with him.

He moved to go. But his own body betrayed him. He came to a jerky halt in the portal of the Sacristy.

It was too dark to look back and see her. Erik was grateful for that. He wasn't sure if he could actually go if he saw her.

Her breathing was slow, and steady, and full of peace.

He fled the chapel before the wicked sun could rise and show him everything that he was giving up.

* * *

 _Author's notes:_

 _Erik's chosen lullaby is "Figlio Perduto." The music is Beethoven's 7th symphony, and the words are an adaptation of the poem_ _Erlkönig. The poem describes the desperate flight of a father and his young boy on horseback. The child who is apparently ill, tells his father that he sees the Elf King riding beside them. The Elf King promises him endless delights if the child will only go with him. The father assures him that he is only seeing mist, or wind moving the trees, that none of it is real. The child hears the Elf King promise that if he will not come by choice, then he will take him by force. The boy cries out. By the time the Father reigns in his horse, the boy is dead in his arms._

 _...It's really gorgeous, and you guys should listen to the music and read the poem. See it sung by SARAH BRIGHTMAN NO LESS (honestly I had no idea) here:_ _youtuDOTbe/24GCYlxMZWw (DOT=.) and look up_ _Erlkönig on wikipedia._


	12. The Window

_Author's Notes: To those of you who are still reading – Thank you for coming with me on this ride. To those of you who wrote reviews / shared comments with me – thank you SO SO much! I have a few more chapters coming, and possibly some little blurb of an epilogue, and they are entirely thanks to my reviewers._

 _This is the last chapter with Erik's POV. This one is to satisfy my own hankerings for jealousy and rivalry and sacrifice._

 _Thank you all again for keeping me going and loving what I love. We are family._

 _(if you are on Tumblr, find me and my drawings there – my handle is CoatNTails)_

* * *

Cold rain assaulted Erik when he stepped out into the graveyard. It soaked into the shoulders of his tail coat, and trickled down the back of his neck. He felt the impulsive longing for his cloak. But it was put to far better use inside, where it remained to keep Christine warm. He sniffed, and accepted the discomfort. It was a just beginning, he thought. The rain was witness to his first murder. Only fitting that it should be there again, to witness the cost. It would be a friend to him, in the end. It would extend the darkness of night into the morning, and hide his face. And what small discomfort there was might help distract him, just a little, from the real pain.

He slid through the graveyard, skirting wide around the Daaé tomb, and emerged onto the avenue. Brisk were his steps as he began the long trek into the village. He counted them, felt the length of his strides. He imagined the distance as it grew between himself and everything he desired most in the world. He didn't notice that he was weeping until he heard a strangled sound in the dark, and realized it came from his own throat. He hunched into the rain and surged forward, pushing himself on, whipping himself like a tired carriage horse to keep moving forward. Though he was powerless to stop the anguished sounds that kept coming with every breath.

The walk was long enough that Erik managed to regain some semblance of self control by the time he entered the village. Once he reached the buildings, he hugged the walls out of habit, and crept through the sleeping town like a thing from the wild that did not belong there. Through the glaze of rain, he spotted the weak light at the door of an inn. And heard the whuffle of a horse posted somewhere in the stables nearby.

It wasn't difficult to distract the stable-hand. All Erik had to do was choose a good position, and throw his voice to the copse of trees at the far end of the courtyard. The sound of distress in his voice came naturally. He didn't have to feign it at all. He only had to hurl it the twenty-five yards or so to the other side of the street. And such a piteous sound it was, that the stable-hand went to investigate it immediately and without fear.

Erik snatched a bridle from the hook on the wall, and slipped into the closest occupied stall. The bay mare inside spooked at his sudden appearance. He allowed her a long moment to sniff him before he moved closer. Lucky for him, she accepted his touch. A few pats and murmured assurances later, and she accepted the bit without fuss. He slung his wiry frame up onto her back without fear or hesitation, and she responded naturally to the sense of control he projected. She was his in only a matter of moments.

The stable-hand didn't realize anything was wrong until he heard the _tlot-tlot_ of hoofbeats over the cobblestones.

It was a long ride into Paris through the rain. The road was muddy, and Erik was quickly chilled to the bone. But he welcomed it. Every pain to his body, every numbed nerve. He welcomed them all and seized them gratefully as he put mile after mile between himself and Christine where she slept in paradise.

* * *

He shivered in the street beneath the Vicomte's rooms.

The tail coat had gone. He'd run his mare hard, and she was steaming in the rain when he'd arrived in Paris. He had nothing to curry her with, no blanket to dry her, so the tail coat had to serve. She was reasonably dry, and tethered in a hidden place, and he – he was in the street looking up at the town house windows of the Vicomte de Chagne.

Why had he come here?

His muscles spasmed in another attempt to generate heat. He could feel the chill of morning fast approaching. The rain was letting up, pre-dawn light was easing itself into the sky, and he could barely make out the face of the building before him. Dawn would come soon. He'd need to hide himself before then... But still he stood in the street before his enemy's door. He grit his teeth so hard that his jaw ached. He slid his thumb repetitively over the rasp of rope at his waist, taking comfort in the feel of it.

The rattle of a coal wagon coming up the avenue spurred him into motion, and he slid towards the building before him.

The decorative facade of the architecture lent him innumerable handholds, offering a quick and fairly easy ascent to the upper story bedrooms. His only difficulty came from his own cold-numbed hands, which he managed to ignore. The first bedroom he came to was unoccupied, as was the second. But the third held the object of his search, and Erik had to brace himself on the balcony rail while he struggled with an unexpected surge of murderous hatred.

All he had to do was go through the window.

He could probably reach the bed without even waking him.

He didn't even need the rope. He could use his bare hands. Wait a moment, warm sensation back into them, so he could feel the life in the Vicomte's body under his fingers.

Feel his own hands squeeze it out of him.

Hold him close enough to see every flicker of thought in the Vicomte's eyes as they regarded each other in that dim, pre-dawn light. Close enough to feel every spasm, hear every choked sound, feel the fear in every quivering fiber of the Vicomte's body.

And when he went still, Erik could push his thumbs into the softness of his eye sockets in punishment for gazing on what was not his. He could tear the flaps of his ears away in punishment for hearing what he was not worthy to hear. He could rake his fingernails over the fair countenance of the vicomte's face to leave him as horrible as Erik himself was.

All this he could do, if he only went through the window.

How he _ached_ for it.

And no one would even know. It would be like an angry ghost had invaded the upper story bedroom. No one would know who had murdered the Vicomte de Chagne, except Raoul himself.

And Christine.

Erik recoiled against the wrought iron of the railing, feeling his murderous rage cool. She would know instantly. He must never do something so hurtful to Christine. He could never break his sacred promise to her. Why had he come? What did he hope to find here? His revenge could never be. He needed...

Erik swallowed, feeling cold and sick and unbearably rebellious at the realization. He _needed_ _Raoul_. Raoul would provide what he could not for Christine. Raoul and his fair face, and his money, and his position, and his boyish adoration, would give Christine a life where she could be happy.

He gazed through the glass into the bedroom. The Vicomte slept, unaware, wrapped in rich fabrics in the shelter of a canopy bed. A bed that he would share with Christine when night fell again. Erik's breath seethed through his clenched teeth, and burning tears streamed from his eyes. Eyes fixed on the sleeping Vicomte. Unblinking eyes that gleamed yellow in the predawn light like a cat's, if anyone in the room were awake to see them.

The lock was simple, and easy to catch. The window let out the faintest creak as it opened with the push of Erik's hand.

"...I entrust you with the most precious treasure on this earth," Erik whispered to the sleeping figure of Raoul, letting his voice into the room where he dared not let his murderous self go. "I bid you to take care of her, Monsieur. Let everything you do, henceforth, be in exultation of her. Cherish her above all other things in life. Endeavor to be worthy of her. ...For if you do not... then may my curse be upon you. _And may you suffer, as I shall suffer._ May you feel, in every moment, waking and sleeping, the ache of loss that I will feel. And may Hell hunt you to your last breath. ...Love her well, Monsieur. And give her all that she should have. Fill her days with light, and make her forget all about me. ...Love her... I beg you. Be the man that she sees in you. Be all that she needs. And I will be indebted to you, forever."

* * *

Raoul woke with a start.

He sat up in his bed, feeling something amiss in the room. The cold struck him suddenly, and he looked to the window to see the curtains ruffled by the cold night air. No – morning. He could see the soft hint of dawning light. Had he left the window open? He could smell rain on the cold air – how foolish of him. But the previous day was a blur of anticipation. He wouldn't blame himself for being absent minded. All his thoughts were for his wedding day – and if it was morning, then the day was upon him! He wove his fingers behind his head and lay back down, his face plastered with the wide smile of a love-sick fool. Today was the day. The beginning of true life. Today, the boyish dreams of childhood would become real, and give him all the fulfillment he could ever long for as a man.

Today was the day.

The cold made him shiver, and he flipped the coverlet aside, rising from the bed. He strode across the room to close the window and throw the latch. The smile wouldn't leave his face.

Today, Christine would make him the happiest man on earth. And Raoul looked happily into the future, across time, sure that he would succeed in his quest to make her the happiest woman in return.

* * *

 _Author's notes: Obvious nod to Leroux is obvious. Because I love love love Erik creeping on Raoul, and his glowing yellow eyes._

 _I really don't want to write the final chapter, you guys D: I don't want to make Chrissy sad. I'll write miserable Erik all day long - he loves to be miserable. But Christine is too pure for this world. Halp._


	13. Morning Light

Christine's eyes blinked open.

She had been dreaming... Something warm and soft and lovely. But the substance of it was lost, banished from her mind by the morning light.

Light!

She pulled in a deep breath to stir herself into wakefulness. It was morning! Scents filled her nose – damp stone, dust, oil – confusing her for a moment before she remembered suddenly where she was. Butterfly wings tickled her stomach. A sick rush of excitement made her head feel dizzy for a moment. She reached out her hand – but met only the rough touch of burlap.

The smile she didn't even realize she was wearing vanished from her face. She sat up, looked around – but she was alone beneath the cloak. Where had he gone? The light – the thought made her brow pinch and her lips thin to an angry line. How many times would she have to prove to him that she could look on his face without fear? She sighed. As soon as the irritation had come, it faded away. Of course it would take time. The experience of a life could not be wiped away in only a few hours. She must be patient-

A soft rap upon the sacristy door made her jump and clutch the cloak to her chest, but her smile bloomed again.

"Angel, how ungallant," she chided, her voice musical with her delight, "to let a lady wake in a cold bed, alone!"

The beat of silence made her fingers clutch tighter on the makeshift coverlet.

There was the soft, nervous clearing of a throat, and then a stranger's voice came from behind the door, turning her blood to ice.

"Please excuse the intrusion, Mademoiselle. I'm sent to collect you, and bring you back to town."

Christine's heart skipped. It felt as if all the air in her lungs had turned cold and thick, making her chest ache, stealing her voice. The stranger behind the door cleared his throat again in an effort to relieve the awkwardness of his situation, and tried again.

"I'm sent to fetch you, Mademoiselle. By a fellow that called himself, Faust. Said you'd know him, though I found it peculiar."

Her eyes came back into focus, and she forced herself to look around with a slow swivel of her head. Her clothes where she had set them, there... but not his. His were gone. The haphazard stack of sheet music, fervently scribbled, that she had longed to go through – gone. The twisted length of rope that he had surrendered to her in the dark – Christine clutched at her chest as the pain of realization settled heavy upon it.

"Um. I'm terribly sorry to disturb you, if I'm disturbing you, it's just, the fellow was quite... insistent. You see. I'm to take you, safely, back into Paris, or … or else … misfortune, or some such. The truth is, I'd rather not find out, if you get my meaning. He was a peculiar fellow, your Faust. So … Mademoiselle … ?"

Christine curled forward, hunching in pain. The frozen sludge in her lungs that had been her breath turned slowly to fire until her chest burned and burned.

" … Mademoiselle? …"

On the other side of the door, the driver stood with his flap cap in his hands. His fingers fidgeted over the threadbare wool, shuffling the cap over and over again between them to distract himself from the feeling of eyes at his back. The whole business felt dodgy. Women bedding down in churches. Men who spoke in whispers in your ear and then vanished before you could lay eyes on them. Threats and promises and uncanny amounts of money … Impulsively, he jabbed one hand into his pocket. The wad of notes was still there. Money was real and wholesome enough, even if the man who'd given it to him wasn't. If it had even been a man at all. If this was even a real woman he spoke to. He cast yet another fearful glance around the run down little chapel and crossed himself before clearing his throat again.

"I'm, uh … I'm sorry, Mademoiselle. Really, I am. It's a lovely little spot, and all. And I understand how rude it is, barging in on a lady, you know. It's just … Well … I was told … The truth of it is, I'm not to leave. Without you, you see. For fear of … Well. Never-mind. But I'll be needing to come in, if you won't come out. Which isn't a thing I want to do, it isn't gentlemanly. But all the same …"

It had gone so silent inside. The driver licked his lips, that fearful tingling on the back of his neck growing stronger, making the cap in his hands tremble. He was readying himself to try the door latch when, at last, a soft reply came from inside. The voice that had been so radiant before sounded altogether different – cold and empty.

"A moment, please."

* * *

It was an act of pure will for Christine to emerge from the sacristy. She felt as if she wore her shame as plainly as she wore her dress. Certainly she carried it in her hands, in the form of a folded cloak, with her stained petticoat hidden beneath. She had no idea what she was going to do with them; she only knew that she couldn't leave them there. The garments, proof of her night with the Phantom, might be found, their significance discovered for all the world to gape at. Or, their significance might escape notice altogether, and they might be discarded as so many soiled rags, forgotten by the world forever. One of these surely would happen, and Christine couldn't decide which frightened her more.

The cab driver retreated a few steps before her as she came out, increasing Christine's feeling that she was shrouded in something visibly unwholesome, that she had been changed into something very different than the girl who had entered the chapel the previous night. But after a nervous shuffling of his cap between his fingers, he dipped his head in a polite little bow.

"G'morning, Mademoiselle. I do beg your pardon. The cab is this way, if you please …" And with that, the man flicked the cap back onto his head and practically scurried ahead of her out of the church.

Christine moved to follow him, but then caught sight of the organ on the far side of the pews, and froze.

 _"I love you, more than music."_

No. Christine's fingers clutched tightly at the treasured cloak. He wouldn't leave her. She was acting like a silly, sulky child. No, he was just doing things in his own strange, mysterious way, as he had always done. No, he must have stayed awake while she slept so he could hatch some new plan. In the absence of trap doors and hidden cisterns, he had to make do with this drama. Morning disappearances and clandestine carriage rides. It would be alright, she assured herself. He had arranged for this cab ride – at least partly by threatening the poor driver, she could tell – to whisk her away to whatever new place he had deemed safe for them. He would probably hide until night fell again. And then he would return to her.

And _then_ she would give _him_ a lesson about how to properly treat a new bride on the morning after their consummation.

"Fiend," she said softly, accusing the empty seat at the organ, with a smile planted firmly again upon her face.

With a resolute sniff and a pass of her hand across her damp cheeks, she strode proudly after the driver to the cab waiting beyond the graveyard gates.


	14. A New Life

_Author's note: This chapter is the result of a night of sadness and wine. Love you all. Sorry, Chrissy._

* * *

The driver was already seated upon his bench, reigns in hand. The horse, feeling the tension in his hands through the lines, fidgeted uneasily in place. Christine stepped up into the cab, meaning to sit quickly, but paused when she saw a folded slip of paper upon the seat.

"Anything amiss, Mademoiselle?" the driver called from his perch.

"No... Drive on, Monsieur," she said, snatching the paper and sitting in its place.

The cab lurched forward in an uncomfortable way, but Christine wasn't paying attention. Over and over she turned the paper in her hands, wondering at it. It was _his_ handiwork, of course. She recognized it. The night before, it had been one of the untidily scribbled sheets of his music. What it was now, she couldn't quite say. A note, she guessed. But lacking sealing wax, he had folded it into a intricate shape that managed to hold itself closed. Her fingers traced over the folds, crisp and elegant. The tip of one finger pried at the edge... but then released it again. She wanted to rip it open immediately, wanted to gorge herself on whatever tender words there were hidden within, like a child would on a handful of sweets. But she forced herself to stop, and wait.

She laid the note upon the folded cloak in her lap. Was it a love note? A note of reassurance and explanation? Something poetic to ward off her dismay? She smiled, tracing the precise folds again. Was it a new composition, written on the back of an old one, inspired by the previous night? Her smile grew unruly and burst full across her face in a very unladylike way. She turned her face to the window, but saw none of the passing scenery, her eyes turning inward instead to the sightless memories of the night before. How could a single night change the universe so dramatically? The life that had stretched out before her now was nothing like the one she'd known yesterday.

The note in her lap made all the butterflies in her stomach flutter their wings madly, and she savored the feeling. The country rolled past outside the little window. The cab rattled onward, the speed of the horse jostling her, and she didn't care a whit. _Let the old world go by,_ she thought. _Let this cab speed me along. On, into this new life. Whatever it's going to be. It's so beautiful. Yes, it was going to be endlessly beautiful..._

The sharp sound of the cab driver cursing caught at her attention, drawing her back into the moment. With a clatter of hooves on the cobbles, the cab slowed, forcing Christine to brace herself so she wasn't thrown forward. She could see through the window that they were in the city again, close to the river.

"What is it?" she called to the cabbie through the window. "What's wrong?"

"Beg your pardon, miss," came his reply from the driver's seat. "There's some kind of slow-up ahead. Looks like the police are about their business, and the street is blocked up with lollygaggers... Hey! You there! Get that nag moving! ...I'm sorry, miss, I'll do my best to get through quick as we can. I know time is of the essence."

Christine relaxed back against the worn velvet of the seat, smiling again. Time of the essence. Was it? She certainly did want to rush to his side. But she wouldn't have to if he had just _stayed put_... It was so early. Here she was, fleeing a church in the misty light of the dawn on the very same day that she was supposed to be rushing towards one...

Her reckless smile faltered at last.

The most sacred day for every good maiden. Her wedding day. That's what today was supposed to have been. That's what she was really fleeing from.

Or, not, Christine thought uneasily, leaning to get a better look out the window. They were heading for the heart of the city. In truth, she was being sped towards the fateful church and not away from it at all. It made her uneasy. She could feel the cold fingers of her shame groping at the edges of her heart, of her mind, trying to find purchase, and she tried to deny them by turning her attention to the street outside. They hadn't made much progress through the traffic. But she had a better view of the commotion now. She could actually see a policeman through the crowd. She wondered idly what had happened. So close to the Seine, it might have been a boating accident? Or someone who had drowned? It saddened her to think that someone else's ultimate misfortune only amounted to a spot of traffic in her own day. Something so awful should make a deeper mark on the world, shouldn't it?

Her eyes were drawn back to the policeman when several of his fellows joined him. The crowd was drawing back, edging away from them, and she looked to see what had caused the stir. Her distracted eyes wandered over the jovial forms of the police, the two newcomers smiling at their comrade, pointing to the thing that held in his hands, and finally she saw what it was – and her heart thundered up into her ears.

Christine burst from the cab.

Distantly, like an echo across some great gulf, she was aware of the cabbie calling out to her in distress. People pressed up against her, blocked her way. And she shoved through them like they weren't people at all, shoved the way she used to shove through the rushes to get to the sandy beach when she was a girl, intent only on her destination. She shoved until she was at the front of the crowd, and the policeman and what he held was right there in front of her.

The loop of the deadly punjab lasso, newly tied and ready to throttle some new victim, hung limp in the policeman's hands.

She strained upwards to try and see beyond them, on pointe, bracing herself on a stranger's shoulder when she was jostled from behind. He had to be there. He must be close by. Perhaps in their custody, trapped, caught – but the panic at the edges of her mind told her no. He had never been caught. He would never be caught. There would only be disaster if he were caught. _Where,_ her mind cried. _Where is he?_

There – another policeman striding through the crowd, trying to restore order, issuing some unheeded command to disperse – but all Christine saw was the shock of white in his hand. A shirt. A fancy dress shirt. Torn and soaked with river water. Stained. Stained a bright, world-ending red. He brought it so close in his attempt to break up the crowd that she could see the frayed threads where two of the buttons were missing.

Suddenly numb, Christine didn't really feel herself stumble backwards. Her brain didn't quite register the strong hands of the stranger that supported her. The crowed buzzed around her, and dully, as if through some barrier of cotton, words drifted through to her.

"The Opera Ghost!"

"The famous Phantom. What, haven't you heard of him? Uncultured is what you are..."

"Escaped the flames of the Opera House..."

"But only to meet a watery end this time!"

"They shot him? What kind of ghost bleeds."

"The Phantom of the Opera is dead, at last. He's finally paid for his crimes."

"And not a moment too soon! He almost claimed one more victim -"

"That brave man! I would have run as fast as my legs would take me, pistol or no..."

"The only survivor of the dreaded punjab lasso! _Hourrah!_ "

Through the gauze that covered her senses, Christine saw the other policeman clap the first solidly on the back as they congratulated him for his quick reflexes and sure aim. Distantly she saw the pride on his face as everyone gathered around him exclaimed at how lucky he was to be alive. Then she was being pulled back, back through the crowd, people filling in to close the gap in a slow blur. Her rescuer, the cab driver, was speaking to her. But the words just washed over her without making much sense.

"There now, Mademoiselle. This way. Out of that crowd, before you're trampled underfoot. You've had a fright, haven't you! Come on, then. Away from all of that. You'd better sit before you fall. There we are. Careful now..."

Somehow she was back in the cab again, her vision framed by the black interior and the bright little square of the window.

She could feel the brush of paper under her fingers. The rich fabric of the Phantom's cloak. The worn velvet upholstery. The vast expanse of Paris whizzed by outside in a long blur. And then more hands were pulling at her, guiding her out of the cab and into some dim interior. It wasn't until she was seated on her own cushioned stool before her own vanity that she realized she had been returned to her flat. Her flat... from her old life. The life she thought had been left far behind her. The patter of words that had been falling over her like raindrops for the last five minutes finally trickled into her consciousness.

" – out all night, dear, I was worried sick. No note, no word. Honestly, I thought the worst. If you hadn't shown up at the very moment you did, dear, I don't know what. A young thing like you. Lord knows what might have happened..."

Christine blinked at the feel of a brush running through her hair. She focused on the image of her landlady reflected in the mirror behind her. The maternal woman was fussing over her like she was her own daughter.

"It's all right dear. We were all young once, even me, though you wouldn't know it. Thank the Lord you're safe. And whatever adventures you got up to last night are behind us and done. No one needs to know. I won't tell. Every woman has her secrets, whatever pedestal the men want to put us up on. Don't you worry about a thing, dear. This is your day. All the unpleasantness of your old life behind you, your new life ahead. And it's going to be perfect. A Vicomte! He may as well be a prince. After today, you'll be a Vicomtesse. Think about that! And we'll get you looking every inch the Vicomtesse. Lets get you out of these clothes and washed. -Oh! Why haven't you any petticoat, girl? What have you gotten up to... Never-mind. I won't ask. It's none of my business, and what's behind is behind. We've all got secrets... Now. Lets wash."

Christine let herself float on the sea of meaningless words. She let herself be guided through the motions of washing, of dressing, of being made up. Until she found herself seated again at her vanity. Her well-meaning landlady was securing the heavy earrings that would complete her virgin-bride ensemble as Christine's eyes focused on her own reflection in the mirror. A stranger stared back at her, dressed in white.

"Perfect," her landlady murmured happily. "And just in time. The carriage will be here in a moment, I'm sure of it. Here, let me take these things you came in with. I'll get them - ...oh. Well, your petticoat didn't go far, did it. Goodness me. No, best not even to launder it. Dear one, don't you worry. I'll take care of it. What the men don't know can't hurt them, Lord knows. And the stove can burn petticoats as well as it can burn wood. And scoundrel's cloaks and all, too, never you- Oh!"

Her doll-like complacency vanished in a moment as Christine snatched the cloak from her landlady's hands, rescuing it from being burned in the stove.

"No," she gasped, "no."

The curiously folded sheet of music fell from the folds of the cloak and into her lap. For a long moment, she just stared at it, amazed at it being there, astounded that she could have forgotten about it until that moment. Movement in the peripheral of her vision made her snatch the paper up into her hands before her Landlady could take it from her and burn it. She turned her back on the woman, using her own body as a shield to protect the treasured slip of paper, and pried the folds open with frantic tugs of her trembling fingers. There, revealed on the back of the sheet music, were the unmistakable strokes of his pen, jagged and clumsy and unimaginably precious. Her eyes darted over the words.

When Christine tried to stifle her gasp with a trembling hand, the landlady reached out gentle hands to steady her. When she dissolved into broken sobs, the older woman pulled her in against her, catching the torrent of tears in her skirts. She took a cool damp cloth to the girl's face, and soothed her with the calmness of her voice. With the patience of a knowing mother, she reapplied her makeup, and told the carriage man to wait when he came to collect the bride. All women had their secrets. And all women had their heartbreak. And it was none of her business. But she could help as well as she could. The life of a Vicomtesse would make her forget her heartbreak soon enough. When the young soprano was at last tucked tucked safely into the carriage, she stood to watch it go, and waved her goodbyes. But there was one duty left to perform. The poor girl had no mother of her own, so it was up to her. Poor dear.

She gathered up the treacherous petticoat, the scoundrel's cloak, and the note that had caused so many tears, and laid each one in turn on the hungry fire. She waited until each had been consumed, and stirred the embers.

Every woman had her secrets.


End file.
